Music Management Using iTunes
Music Management Using iTunes Posted on: 03.12.2012 by Nestor Epper I was talking on this topic in another post this week and thought I would start a thread on it just in case there is anyone out there looking for way to manage their music. I prefer to use iTunes as it makes life much easier. It took a while to work out the bugs and get it setup properly and of course was very time consuming. But now that I have it setup properly the time I have saved importing my music definitely outweighs the time it spent setting it up. Foundations As stated in Ean’s article “The Art of Prep” the best thing to do in your prep time is to have a rock solid track import system. I would read the article for all the details but just breaking down this one step this is what he states: • Only use iTunes to manage all of your DJ music (lose the folders) • Set iTunes to copy all songs into the library on import • Turn off “Keep iTunes organized” • Every new song is dragged into iTunes (and therefore copied into the database) • Songs are analyzed by Mixed In Key before Traktor import • Songs are ONLY imported into Traktor or other DJ software through iTunes playlist import or through the software’s iTunes browser I believe the best thing you can take away from that all your music is in one centralized place. Instead of being scattered all over the place on your computer it’s all in one spot. Nothing gets lost. If you need to back up your music collection (I recommend doing often) the only thing you need to copy is your iTunes folder. This not only backs up your music but your iTunes database as well. The only difference I follow is that I analyze all my tracks in Mixed in Key bore I put them in iTunes but I don’t believe it matters either way. I created a playlist in iTunes named DJ Tunes and ALL my DJ music gets clicked and dragged into this playlist. This is a temporary spot for the tracks and serves two functions 1) it Copies the files into the iTunes library (And the file into the iTunes music folder) 2) It puts them all in one place for me to verify the file information is correct. (Leading to our next topic) Once all that information is verified to be correct and the way I want it I remove it from this list to make way for more new tracks. Tagging Time Now the key to making all of this work easily and effortlessly come down to just one thing and that’s proper labeling and tagging of your music. If everything follows the same method and system then you can quickly search for tracks and better manage your music. Here are the fields that I have come to rely on in iTunes: Name – Track name obviously Artist - Artist name obviously Comments – I put my Key data in here Genre – Separate Multiple genres with / Grouping – I use this to separate my DJ tracks from regular listening music (More on this later) Star Rating – Using for energy level of track Not the Average Playlist Now with all your music in one location on your hard drive and all of its information correct and accurate there is only one thing left to do. Make your playlists. Now I could go through and add each track I want to each individual playlist.But why do that when I can have it done for me automatically right? That’s where the genius of “Smart Playlists” comes in. Smart playlists are playlists that area created from criteria you determine beforehand. They are updated in real time by iTunes. (As long as you set it to auto update in the settings which is the default) An example: Creating a list with the criteria of Genre – Contains – “House” any music that is my library with the term “House” in its genre field will automatically show up in this list. Whether that be Progressive house, Electro House, or just house. It doesn’t matter it all goes in. In the example above I could make another that is Genre – Contains – “Electro” and it would contain all songs with a genre containing “electro” including Electro House. So a track with a genre of “electro house” with show up in both lists without lifting a finger at all. And this is where the beauty of it all comes together. Now by looking at my playlists you can see there are allot of things you can do with the smart playlists. It is time consuming but once they are setup there is nothing else you have to do. Just import your songs and tag them. Everything else is automatic. I’m not going to break down all of these. But I’ll explain a few of them… By Key: I like to mix harmonically so all my keys are in the Camelot Wheel notation. These lists are all broken down into these keys so all tracks in that key are listed. Example of how to do this is below: Match all Comment – Is – “2A” By Genre: These are just like the example I listed before. I create a folder for each Genre and put sub genres below that. Match Any Genre – Contains – “House” Genre – Contains – “Caribbean” By Artist: This one is a little tricky because sometimes a guest artist will be listed in the track title and sometimes it will be listed in the artist field. The list is simpler than it would seem. Match any Artist – Contains – “Afrojack” Name – Contains – “Afrojack” Mixes Well With: This goes back to the harmonic mixing. Without going into too much detail how harmonic mixing works, a 2A song can be mixed a 2B, 1A, 3A, or another 2A song. So I just include all of them in the smart list so in a pinch if I need to mix out of a song I can quickly find a song it should sound pretty good with the one playing. What about Grouping? Now before when talking about tagging I mentioned I use the grouping category a lot. And you will notice in my screen shots I use it in all of my smart lists. It’s really simple. I used to have multiple iTunes libraries for different situations. “DJ Tunes” for my club and DJ music, and a regular one just for my “normal” music for listening to. This would cause me problems because I would want to grab a track from on or the other and would have to switch by closing out of iTunes and launching it again with the new library. Not only would this cause issues inside Traktor but iPhones can only sync to one library. So I couldn’t sync to both. Then I thought to myself. “If I am already using smart playlists for my music why can’t I integrate everything into one library? And this is where grouping came in. All my music I use to DJ with I change the grouping field in iTunes to DJ tunes. When creating a smart playlist I make the parent rule “Grouping – is – DJ Tunes” so only my “DJ Tunes” show up in these lists. Another benefit is that if I am at a gig and they crowd is just not feeling it I can always mix it up with some tunes that might not be your typical “club” music. Where does Traktor fit into this? So where does Traktor come into the equation? Well in Traktor you can access your iTunes library by going down the side bar and expanding the iTunes section. It will display your iTunes library and all of your playlist. (Including smart playlists) to import your iTunes library to Traktor simply right click on iTunes and click import to library. It can take a while depending on how may tunes you have. When you add music to iTunes is sure to repeat this step so your new music is added to the Traktor collection. Odds and Ends Just a few notes to add. This has been an ever evolving process and may not work for everyone. I’m just throwing it out here to help anyone who may want it. This works very well for me and has cut my prep time on tracks in half if not more. What I would recommend for a new DJ or any Traktor DJ is to get an external hard drive. Put the following on it: Traktor install and update files Your iTunes library Your Traktor Collection and settings I run Traktor and iTunes from this drive. To move these items to and run those from the drive do the following: (This is for PC as I do not have a Mac) Copy the entire iTunes folder for your “My Music” folder to the drive - Start >Run >%userprofile%\Music Copy your Traktor collection and settings to the drive - Start > Run >%userprofile%\Documents\Native instruments - Grab the most recent version folder To get these programs to use this information do the following ITunes: - Hold shift when launching iTunes - This will make it prompt to choose or create library - Select choose library and navigate to your external drive Traktor: - Opens settings and navigate to File Management - Set all of these locations to the locations on your external drive After you have your external drive setup and working back this up to another drive. The idea behind all of this is that if something happens to your laptop you can buy/borrow another laptop and you have everything you need on the external drive. (Including the install files) The second drive is in case something happens to the first drive. So that’s that. Sorry for the long post. But it was allot of info to get out there. I hope this helps some people and if you have any questions about anything or it’s just not making any sense feel free to send me a message and I can see what I can do to help. | |
| Nestor Epper 06.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by Patch
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| Nestor Epper 06.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by ad357
Originally Posted by ad357
I've been toying around with maybe doing like 1-Warmup / 3-Peak / 5-Closer for their respective genres. So my chill list will still have star ratings throughout as just a reference point for where a track might fit through out a set. Does anyone else have any good ideas for an effective way to use star ratings? Or should I just give up on that idea now? lol |
| Francis Leckliter 05.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by Skyline
To others using the star rating...is the stars relative to your entire collection, genre, other? Because right now all my deep house tracks being the less intense genre I play would get 1 stars I guess?? |
| Nestor Epper 05.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by ad357
Your right if that’s the criteria then it should be pulling the same thing. I am unable to see the screenshots because I am at work. (firewall ) Have you been able to determine which of the tracks are missing? Or at least one to look at and compare? Once I get home from work to take a peek at your screenshots maybe I will see something I'm not getting now. Off at 7PM CST |
| Nestor Epper 04.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by stevohill
Originally Posted by Gokari
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| Virgina Remson 04.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by DJ 2 Cut
Alright you've convinced me. I know I've got a lot of junk floating around that needs to be either sorted or deleted. Looks like it's time for some spring cleaning! |
| Nestor Epper 29.01.2013 | I KNOW!! Apple is supposed to be all innovative and stuff but their flagship music software is missing FLAC support. WTF?! |
| Lauretta Ehrhorn 29.01.2013 | Excellent post. I just wish Itunes would support FLAC natively |
| Nestor Epper 11.12.2012 | Thanks all |
| Maile Dekerlegand 06.12.2012 | excellent post, well done! |
| Margot Demeo 06.12.2012 | Very helpful, thanks! |
| Celine Surico 05.12.2012 | I use star ratings this way: * slow, ambient * slower dance music *** medium pace music **** fast music ***** crazy energy levels Now, for Nu-disco a lot falls into *** and ****, for chill betwen * and ***, I guess psy i all ***** but that's how it is. But per genre mixing those give me clues not to get a *** track after a ***** unless I want it to happen. And it's hard to remember 25k+ tracks how they exactly sounds. Oh, I also try to grade tracks in the comment section, it starts with [a], [b] or [c] with comments after that. With a smart playlist I could find all [a] tracks or all graded ones. I also have simple playlists with the absolute best tracks I know of per genre but I sometimes feel it's like being a radio DJ to just use those tracks over and over. Did I mention to make your own genre specs, much better than using anything the MP3/AAC files deliver? |
| Jacqualine Cieplik 05.12.2012 | I rate my music on set times 1* Warm Up 2* Warm Up - Intro 3* Dance Starter 4* Peak 5* Club Banger |
| Nestor Epper 06.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by Patch
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| Brunilda Kora 06.12.2012 | Star rating would have to go hand in hand with genre - like ad357 said. A 5* jungle tune will not mix well with a 5* ambient tune... |
| Nestor Epper 06.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by ad357
Originally Posted by ad357
I've been toying around with maybe doing like 1-Warmup / 3-Peak / 5-Closer for their respective genres. So my chill list will still have star ratings throughout as just a reference point for where a track might fit through out a set. Does anyone else have any good ideas for an effective way to use star ratings? Or should I just give up on that idea now? lol |
| Shayne Kohtz 05.12.2012 | I believe you'd definitely need to do it relative to genre, otherwise what's the point? Tag all my chillout tracks as 1 star? Why bother? Btw - Thanks for this thread OP, I've been meaning to sort out my tunes properly for ages. This seems to be working quite well so far. |
| Francis Leckliter 05.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by Skyline
To others using the star rating...is the stars relative to your entire collection, genre, other? Because right now all my deep house tracks being the less intense genre I play would get 1 stars I guess?? |
| Shayne Kohtz 05.12.2012 | I believe I've figured it out. All it seems to be doing is not pulling duplicates across, which is fine. Now I feel stupid haha. |
| Shayne Kohtz 05.12.2012 | The screenshots are just showing what I've described anyway. They're really just proof that I haven't done something stupid lol. I'll have a look just now & see if I can figure out what tracks it's missing. |
| Nestor Epper 05.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by ad357
Your right if that’s the criteria then it should be pulling the same thing. I am unable to see the screenshots because I am at work. (firewall ) Have you been able to determine which of the tracks are missing? Or at least one to look at and compare? Once I get home from work to take a peek at your screenshots maybe I will see something I'm not getting now. Off at 7PM CST |
| Shayne Kohtz 05.12.2012 | Can anyone help with this? I can't understand why there's a difference in the number of tracks. It makes me not trust the whole smart playlist thing, this is the first time I've attempted to use iTunes to organise my files for Traktor. 1579 tracks imported to 'DJ Tunes' playlist. Smart Playlist titled 'All' only has the rule "Playlist is DJ Tunes" so should contain the exact same as the 'DJ Tunes' playlist but it only has 1571 tracks. Any ideas? What has happened to the other 8 tracks? I worry that this problem is only going to get worse as the amount of tunes is multiplied by about 10. |
| Nestor Epper 04.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by stevohill
Originally Posted by Gokari
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| Virgina Remson 04.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by DJ 2 Cut
Alright you've convinced me. I know I've got a lot of junk floating around that needs to be either sorted or deleted. Looks like it's time for some spring cleaning! |
| Wilbert Kulczak 04.12.2012 | 2 Cut, you couldn't have posted this at a better time. I've been seriously needing to better organize my library. Previously went through and cleaned out the "bloat tracks" as you put it, but have been in dire need of better organization/sorting. Your method is exactly what I've been wanting to do, and using the iTunes Smart Playlist seems perfect. Now, I just need to set aside a weekend to get this done... |
| Asuncion Yeakel 04.12.2012 | Never understood the star rating but you gave me an idea, i could use the stars for warm ups, peak and bangers! |
| Nestor Epper 04.12.2012 |
Originally Posted by Gokari
The smart lists also make it easy to find imperfections in your collection. I created a list to find any tracks missing Key data just by putting in Comments - Contain - " " (Nothing) and BOOM instantly found half a dozen tracks that slipped through the cracks |
| Virgina Remson 04.12.2012 | A++ post Great read! I might actually start using Itunes, I've just been organizing my own folders for so long and change is scary! |
| Brunilda Kora 04.12.2012 | Great post, 2 Cut. One all the noobs should read 2 or 3 times over. |
| Celine Surico 04.12.2012 | Smart playlists are the best. Wish Traktor had something like that but then again I just use the iTunes library from Traktor.... |
| Kasandra Kreindler 04.12.2012 | pro write up, stuff i already implement sans the use of iTunes but i had to bump the thread and give credit where credit is due |
| Janyce Henningson 05.12.2012 | Excellent write up... I would rather pull out my eyeballs than use iTunes, but everyone else on here seems to use it - sticky worthy thready |
| Edmundo Kivisto 05.12.2012 | Awesome write up....wil. implement some of this.... |
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