Trying to manage music. Help!
Trying to manage music. Help! Posted on: 19.11.2013 by Marcelina Hanaway Finally decided to buckle down and create some playlists in iTunes. At first, I tried just going through my library and dragging songs to the corresponding genre, for instance. But I realized I was putting some of the same songs in different playlists. So then I tried unchecking all my tracks and just checking the ones I wanted going into a specific playlist. Very tedious, but I guess that's what I get for waiting so long. ANYWAY, I was just wondering if there is a way to mass select the "checked" tracks instead of selecting them one by and dragging them to the playlist. Also, any other tips or ideas would very much be appreciated. Thanks! | |
| Sonja Roybal 24.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by happydan
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| Evalyn Voges 23.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by b1sh0p
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| Cody Mcnall 22.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by Mabonzo
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| Sonja Roybal 24.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by happydan
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| Evalyn Voges 23.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by b1sh0p
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| Sonja Roybal 22.11.2013 | When I see threads like this, it makes me happy I only play 1 genre. This seems so tedious. I pretty much have a mental note of every tune I play. |
| Cody Mcnall 22.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by Mabonzo
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| Augustina Zulu 23.11.2013 | If you import the smart playlist into a Traktor playlist then it wont update when it changes in iTunes but if you play off of the iTunes node in Traktor then it updates every time you open Traktor. I play off of iTunes smart playlists in Traktor all the time and it is tremendously useful - even just the stock ones like "recently added". |
| Jetta Drenzek 22.11.2013 | Sorry if I wasn't too clear, that is what I meant, using iTunes through Traktor. I read some people complaining they had to delete them and refresh them every time they opened Traktor to get the updated versions of the tracks and that's why I never bothered. I'ma look into it now though thank god I spent all that time hashtagging! |
| Brunilda Kora 22.11.2013 | You can still use your iTunes Smart Playlists in Traktor from the iTunes node - but you just have to make sure that the tunes in the iTunes Smart List are ALSO in the Traktor collection. There's a thread around here somewhere discussing it... Check it out: http://community .djranking s.com/showthread.php?t=72024 |
| Cassie Sangermano 22.11.2013 | Unfortunately Traktor does not have the ability to do smart playlists.... You can however set up smart playlists in iTunes and then either use the iTunes node in Traktor, or import the playlist into Traktor. No on-the-fly smartlists within traktor though. I believe it's probably one of the main features missing from Traktor, I believe near enough every other DJ software has them. VDJ and Cross definitely do, not sure about Serato as I've never used it. |
| Jetta Drenzek 22.11.2013 | I've never bothered with the Smart Playlists, just looked into them... Do they work well with Traktor? Because that pretty much looks like it's going to stop me spending ages dragging stuff around into playlists. |
| Marcelina Hanaway 22.11.2013 | Great tips, doods. That Dubspot article is great! Definitely gonna try and emulate that method. |
| Brunilda Kora 22.11.2013 | Don't get me started on Smart Playlists. I fookin' LOVE 'EM!!!!! Detailed Tags + Smart Playlists = DJ INVINCIBILITY!!! |
| Izetta Pitney 22.11.2013 | http://blog.dubspot.com/how-to-creat...sic-in-itunes/ This is by far of the best articles I have ever read. It changed how I see my music and even how play. I have adapted this method with tweaks of my own to make my library more personal and allow my library to work for me. I have been going all my music (120gb+) over the past year or so making sure each file is correctly named and contains all the comments, extra information and even hot cues + loops in traktor and serato. I hope you will it find as help as I did |
| Brunilda Kora 22.11.2013 | Good point, deevey. If you are listening to a track, and can't decide what genre you believe it is, just believe "what other tracks would I play with this track?". Then, tag it with the genre of the tracks that you would play it with... |
| Rolanda Clodfelder 22.11.2013 |
I wouldn't get so accurate with your genres.
Base the genres, playlists and tags on what YOU feel the track is, not what a label, other DJ's or websites tell you it is, if they work together, bundle them together e.g. 30 tracks for each different sounding genre labeled "Deep Tech-house" or "Heavy Bass Disco Dubs" will serve you a million times better than 1000 tracks labeled "Deep house", when that happens you're completely screwed. |
| Evalyn Voges 22.11.2013 | Like people have said... You need to spend a bit of time ensuring all the metadata is set up. Personally, I did a bit a time over a couple of weeks, in Traktor. It meant I could easily see where there were gaps in the information. I have all the Key info in the Key Text tag as well as the Comments tag. I also have notes to prompt me about a track in the Comments section, as well as something like "goes with X" so that when I search for "goes with", I know there are a bunch of tunes that work with others, kind of like a panic button. My comments tags look like this: Disco - big tune funky guitar goes with xxx - 4A This lets you easily search for similar tracks, so if you need a funky track to go with it, just search globally for "funky 4A". I have playlists set up for each year purchased to break it down so I can search current tracks. Then, if by some miracle I am playing out, I would make a playlist with a couple dozen tracks that fit the evening , as a bit of a primer. In the past, I've tended to use this system to give me confidence when kicking off a set, but once I find my groove, I expand out into the rest of my library. Also, My tracks are arranged on the HDD in folders of the year purchased, then genre. I also have a "new" folder for incoming tracks that need sorting. So, my folders look like this: +[2013] +----[_NEW] +----[Disco] +----[Old School] +----[Progressive House] +----[Tech House] +----[Techno] When the _NEW folder gets a bit crowded, I throw the tracks into their genre folder and reanalyse my collection. |
| Jetta Drenzek 21.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by nudedudewithattitude
I wouldn't get so accurate with your genres. I personally use the comment section to put things like #groove, #deep or what have you, so when I want Deep House tracks or deep sounding tracks in Traktor I can just search for #deep. |
| Marcelina Hanaway 21.11.2013 | I believe my biggest problem is deciding the genre of a track. If I have 100 tracks unchecked in iTunes, for example, and check all the Nu-Disco tracks, drag them to the Nu-Disco playlist, then uncheck all the tracks again and work with adding Deep House tracks to the Deep House playlist, I tend to add some of the same tracks from Nu-Disco into Deep House. OH LORDT! |
| Latoria Kavulich 21.11.2013 | iTunes is fine for prepping tracks imo. not perfect but a lot less hassle than using multiple apps for the same task. I drag and drop from my beatport folder, change the genre if necessary and go from there. |
| Marcelina Hanaway 21.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by Chelan
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| Chuck Peretto 21.11.2013 | MP3Tag is Windows only - I guess I remember reading that, but thought you or someone else may have found a similar version for Mac - no? As far as tagging multiple tracks in iTunes: Select more then one track; ctrl click and choose get info; choose yes when it asks if you want to edit info for multiple items; then edit the fields of your choosing (most probably being the genre I would guess). Does this not count as tagging multiple tracks in one shot? |
| Marcelina Hanaway 21.11.2013 | MP3Tag is Windows only (see previous post). With a tagging program like MP3Tag, you can tag multiple tracks in one shot as opposed to one by one as you would do in iTunes (see previous post). |
| Chuck Peretto 21.11.2013 | Several questions regarding this thread topic: 1. I'm on a Mac myself. What makes MP3Tag better then just tagging in iTunes? Is it just more detailed as far as what you can enter or am I missing something else? 2. I'm with you guys on the feat/ft choice. I mark all mine as "Feat." right now. Is there a preferred way among y'all or really just personal preference? An anal thing I know. 3. I've read chapter 7.2 in the Traktor 2 Bible but still don't believe I quite get this: I don't care about all the 20+ or so genres that iTunes has labeled my music. I want to just organize all my music to about 10 to 12 genres in Traktor. But everytime I change the genre in Traktor it will change it in iTunes also. Does my Trakor genre listing have to absolutely mirror iTunes? Because I have never gave star ratings in iTunes to tracks. I organize my tracks in Traktor 2 and use the star rating there, but iTunes never has copied the star rating from what I have set in Traktor 2 thankfully. Any suggestions or tips with this issue? Thanks. |
| Marcelina Hanaway 21.11.2013 | Anyone know of any Mac compatible alternatives to MP3Tag? |
| Cassie Sangermano 21.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by Patch
Originally Posted by Patch
Originally Posted by nudedudewithattitude
I'm pretty sure MP3Tag is Windows only.... Do a search on this form for MP3Tag, I know people have suggested alternatives for MAC before. |
| Loyd Cilek 21.11.2013 | I need to do this. Currently have everything tagged, genre wise, as 'Deep House', need to go through and properly sort them out. I'm also very pedantic with the naming of my files, but I do admit I use 'Feat.', sorry Patch |
| Marcelina Hanaway 20.11.2013 | Can't seem to find a Mac version of MP3Tag. Is there not a mac version? Say it ain't so! |
| Augustina Zulu 20.11.2013 | In addition to genre I always populate BPM and put key words in comments like "banger" "intro" "deep" "vocal" etc. Then I can make an iTunes smart playlist with something like genre=house and bpm < 122 and comment contains "deep" and boom I have a great starting point for my lounge/nu-disco play list. I'll usually copy this over to a normal playlist and delete the smart one but sometimes the smart playlist has everything I need and I just ignore the false positives. They main point has already been said - add as much meta data (id3 tags) to your music as possible. |
| Marcelina Hanaway 21.11.2013 | Thanks, Patch! Hopefully, I can get the ball rolling smoothly. |
| Brunilda Kora 20.11.2013 | [quote"DDWA"]...and tend to obsess over the little things[/quote] Join the gang, mate! I lose my mind when I see Dj instead of DJ, featuring/Feat./feat. instead of ft., or Run-Dmc instead of Run-DMC!!! May I also suggest, then: Renamer Actaully, scratch that - I've recently found out that you can do a lot of what an be done in Renamer using actions in MP3Tag. But reamer is pretty intuitive, and easy to pick up.... |
| Marcelina Hanaway 20.11.2013 | Sorry, I just mean all my tracks are written and capitalized properly. (eg. Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby, as opposed to vanilla ice-ice ice baby). I have an English degree, and tend to obsess over the little things. Really liking what that MP3Tag is all about. Thanks for sharing. Will give it a go toevening . |
| Brunilda Kora 20.11.2013 | Give us an example of what "grammatically constructed" means. Is that a naming convention? Because in MP3Tag, you can Convert Filename to Tags. I have the folowing naming convention: 10A - 126 - Dj Patch - Hot Tune Right Here Key (I store key in the Album Tag) BPM (I store BPM in the Track# tag) Artist Title You can populate all of the related tags by clicking "Convert Filename to Tag", and setting the following parameters: %Album% - %Track% - %Artist% - %Title% You'll need to download the software to understand what that all means! (I bulk add "genre" tags too. Drag in a bunch of Hip-Hop tunes and tag 'em all with "Hip-Hop"). Tags are kept in the actual mp3 file - so if your iTunes collection goes tits up, you don't lose any of the info. i don't add any info to tunes in iTunes. Ever. Keep it with the mp3. |
| Marcelina Hanaway 20.11.2013 | I just have one Music folder on my desktop where all my music is. Every track is grammatically constructed perfectly. They're just not really organized any other way. |
| Cassie Sangermano 20.11.2013 | Yes, but you can do bulk editing in MP3Tag, so you can select 20 tracks that you're going to tag as 'Disco' and tag them all the same in 1 go. Much faster than doing each one individually. How are your tracks organised on your hard drive?? |
| Marcelina Hanaway 20.11.2013 | So let me get this straight. Tagging your mp3s means selecting each track and detailing it? Definitely gonna check out MP3Tag out, but how will that make it any easier? Won't I still have to "describe" each track individually? |
| Cassie Sangermano 20.11.2013 | Don't do it all at once then. Just set aside a few of hours a week to do it instead. I went through and tagged my whole library about a year ago in small doses (4-5 hours a week, plus tagging on the fly at gigs if I played out tracks that I hadn't tagged). Took me a couple of months in total to do it, but it's well worth it, and from then on I only have to do anything when I add new tracks on a weekly basis, and it takes no time at all! |
| Marcelina Hanaway 20.11.2013 | I just spent about 10 days listening and scrapping my entire collection, so I'm good in that area. I have about 1,800 tracks I'm working with now. What I've been doing is adding music to iTunes/Rekordbox according to the day the tracks were acquired. So, for example, today I will be adding June 2013 into my iTunes/Rekordbox. I'm trying to sort the music month by month, but some months have about 100 tracks and halfway through my organizing I usually get lost in the categorization of it all. Genres I have so far are Disco, Nu Disco, Deep House, Garage, Acid, and Techno. So it's just hectic trying to get all that sorted. I will tag the tracks though. I just feel by the time I go through that process, I won't have actually touched my gear for 2 weeks. Sucks. |
| Libbie Orion 19.11.2013 |
Originally Posted by nudedudewithattitude
A) while all the songs are loaded into a MAIN playlist in itunes listen to them rigth click them click SONG INFO and then add info where needed + alter the genre in the bottom field Ok great you got that down and you edited ALL your tracks Now look at your COLUMNS in your playlist. You should see one marked GENRE click it and you just sorted ALL your tracks per genre together. Now you can drag them to their corresponding genre playlist elsewhere in iTunes ok there is something else you need to do.... im sure of it. You have download (sorry i mean) You have PURCHASED a ton of songs, and some of them in packs of songs. Ok so now its a mess of songs in the same place but not all are Trance, not all are House, and so on not a problem What i do when i dowload a pack of songs is i load them all into iTunes listen to each one from the folder they came from in the playlist i delete the ones i DONT like all thats left is what i DO like. Now select ALL the songs in that left over list and drag them ALL to a NEW FOLDER in your computer iTunes will copy them all into there Now the old folder they came from, well, yuo dont need that anymore so delete the entire folder Besidse it contains songs you dont want and they are taking space. Hows that for ya? |
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