Lessons

Lesson Info

Organizing with Crates and Playlists Part 2

I keep saying it but like this comes down to preference and your preference for like, what works for you? Um the one thing that I will say is that when you then create a crate and now once that crate is created and I were to then open up another version of cerrado like if I'm now downloading a new version ofthe open up scratch live or any other surat oh based program all those um playlist will come with it so like, you don't have to keep duplicating this over same thing with tractor if you're open up another version of track there that all of those playlist would still be there the one nice thing if you the reason why I like maybe reading itunes would be helpful is if you were to jump back and forth between programs quite often and you wanted to keep that itunes full and or with like you guys meant you're on record box same sort of thing where itunes record box nineteen's talk to each other do you organize through itunes? So you do that where then it's reading itunes ok cool sweet ever...

run into a problem when you feel like that's the best way to organize for you guys it's fantastic smart playlists are incredible would you usually use as your sort how you create your smart place so I have to find a balance between downloading new music and then the music it currently have so I'll have all my music stored in one folder ok? And then anything I download goes into another folder doesn't use separate will separate folder in itunes no outside of change we're not in itunes yeah yeah right ok, because I don't want to move the stuff I've downloaded into the other folder until I've put it into itunes so what you wanna do this stuff that you've downloaded because I haven't processing I haven't done anything with it once I'm moving in itunes I can now move it into my all music folder once in itunes then I can start going uh create smart playlists based on, uh rating yeah, it's per minute. Uh, in the comments section all have if I want to add like another tag so that I can have it going to different smart playlists I'll make sure to do that like if it's ah groover I'll make sure to put gruber in the comment section if it's a banger so even if it's multiple things, if it's a groover that's a banger that has vocals I'll have that so that it's going to all three of those smart playlists injuries thing then on top of that, if I'll have ah so the rating system is I set the smart playlists up so that if it has anything they won't show up until into my final cut unless it's three or above okay so that's like a must before does in any other playlist so first first rule is first the sort of first filter down is it's got to be three stars or better yeah ok so if it means that then it goes to the second one which is all right uh this is my bangers playlist okay so if it has three stars or above and it's a banger it's going to shoot right into bangers okay uh and you can pretty much customize that however you want right and that way also know if it doesn't have a star next to it I haven't processed yet it doesn't go anywhere so no star it just sits there yeah I haven't I haven't thought of itunes right you haven't you haven't analyzed yeah so it's not going to show up in any folder because I haven't done anything with it right yeah what happens when it's what happens in a song no longer is a banker like no longer yeah like is like not hot anymore like you know I mean like the song was hot like that was three years ago it's not anymore what do you you can also filter based on like how new right so if you want to start filtering out things that aren't playing aren't new anymore right? You can add that to your list or better yet every six months or so go through your stuff going through it, get rid of whatever it is you don't like anyone absolutely like this is great. This is great and this is actually a part of the reason why I wanted to have this as a as a session is too open up this dialogue and discussion for how people organize because everybody's going to organize a little bit differently and this part of it is like really, really, I think helpful even for me like to hear that I'm going to actually probably start tio, test that out a little bit and start to use like some itunes smart playlists and see what what uh, what I can come up with their anybody else? Like, how do you organize your music? It's not very organized. Okay, so would surprise you download something in their words to go to the downloads folder. Ok? And then where did you go after that? Um either an itunes or in misurata. Okay, I only like d j in my room at home, so I mean, I'll put stuff on a flash drive and throw it on my laptop, right? And like all edit tags in cerrado and like you said, it will stick to the mp three or wave, and so if I'm going between my two computers, all like just all be on the flash drive than deejaying and then sometimes I just wiped the drive and forget about it and have to restart not very organized, right? Right um cool I mean, I think that this is this is although really really helpful so well another way that I do this on my side of his I download this song those in downloads on movinto you saw what I did, I'm then moved it to a folder that I've created and I've started to then create folders that are sort of almost temporary folders like you that like okay having analyzed this yet I haven't done that yet, so I'll set before them down, I'll name it based on the date so it won't necessarily be something that came out on this day or won't be from this, you know, isn't this particular genre or anything that it's just a date it's a date that I downloaded this stuff and, you know, I downloaded three songs and all three songs or than in this folder titled october twenty second, two thousand fourteen and it's there and that's only gonna be there for a temporary period I'm then going to analyze that, um I'm gonna move them actually I started to do this where instead of like, I started to skip this step and then where is my finder so then inside of like hopper's music for d jane that if I were to let me get rid of these real quick, these folders that aren't doing anything I started to then do it as like just organized by datemodified and then so skip that step so like just have one folder that is just all the music and then organized that in somewhere in some other place like organized that inside of like cerrado or inside of tractor whatever as like he's playlists and then being able to move them around that much um so yeah, I mean, you know, I think finding what what works for you anybody else here have a different way of organizing music dick on how do you organize your music? I don't actually I've never deejay it enough to need toe have my music catalog to, like recall it quickly, right? So I just use I just use search and then I find what is your music go if you like where to download a song is just going to downloads and then do you move it to like music or does it stay and I move it to music and then I clear my downloads and so if you're looking for a certain song, you go into music and then I guess just search within that music in I teens usually nineteen yeah sweet this is but I think as I'm watching you do this I'm realizing that this would really differentiate because I'm really interested in me jane, and getting more into this a lot of people calling say, well, can you do this this and this and candid deejay and uh and I always said no, but as I'm thinking about it like this would really set you apart and allow you to be a lot more successful d j but doing this versus like being sort of disorganized and like a word that song go, you know told like that would be a nightmare it's really is and I think like, you know, even if I were to give myself a grade probably out of, like, ten unlike my organization, probably organization of my music while in four d j is probably at about, like, a seven point five like by all means, I think that there's a ton of room for for improvement and growth with everybody that I know like there's a few people that I know they're just like super meticulous about this but this also obviously a big part of this is this takes a decent amount of time, you know, that takes a lot of time to like, you know, time and then disciplined is where the states and then having a system so whatever your system is follow that system like ride that system out teo and make sure that you just always apply the same rules and if you know if your system requires too much time and you don't have that time then it's not gonna work for you so like make sure you find something that then works for you like maybe a different one of like using the finder create finder folders would work better for somebody or you know however which way you do it but make sure you organize and then the best you know, one of the other pieces of this is make sure that you definitely set aside time at some point in the year to do exactly what we were talking about about like, stop look at your stuff like take some time to just kind of like go through reorganized move things around maybe take a weekend to do that find a weekend in your schedule that's like a little bit slower um you know, maybe that's a good time to like do that holiday time, you know? Well maybe like everything else is like quiet and you know, maybe things aren't as hectic maybe over like thanksgiving weekend you're taking you know, a day or two just like going and organize your um your tracks and just kind of get rid of some stuff um add, you know, re tagged things that were not cool um sweet the only other thing that I want to cover when it comes tio playlist and crates um in here is um you can also you can go into a track and change the name of things you can add in my cover our if you wanted to two apiece you can do all of this inside of you can do is all inside of itunes you can do this inside of surat oh, so let me actually pull this back up. So where is my so here? This would be this would be an issue if my all here actually let me do let me do what? Um we're talking about here we do a smart playlist your regular post itunes has, um changed quite a bit over time, huh? Is the difference of tracks here? All right, so let me just do this real fast. All right? So get in full. All right? So if anybody hasn't done this yet, you can go in and you can add artwork to your to your tracks what I really recommend and this is a little bit a little bit of a tangent, but for those of you who are creating your own remixes creating your own tracks I feel like album art is like while it's such a small detail to some I feel like album art is a big deal in terms of like the visual piece of it I mentioned to you earlier much very much a visual person and I think by going through tracks and being able to see that like, oh wow there's cover art on this it almost feels like it then done it's completed its your work you can also make your own cover art for things obviously like just by adding this in I can then pull up a file on my computer or something like that and add like a photo to it um you can actually have itunes go and find album art for songs if you want soda automatically do that if you want to do it that way um but you can go in and set all of this information so you know if you wanted tio like I said, this is all stuff that will show up later. So what is interesting though, is because there's two of this record this one that I'm working on right now is the one that's inside of itunes it's not the one that I moved over to cerrado so all the changes that I'll make to this are going to be made to that file, not the one in cerrado that you'll see so actually I'm going to do that really quick and say that comment here is, um let's call this a sixteen bar intro sixteen bar mix point just making stuff up here um let's add in some artwork um you find like out it's pretty interesting how much aren't working is out there for stuff um okay download this save image is everybody okay? Um out there okay, um downloading that levi did court there it is um and if I go back to itunes at in downloads you calm so that's all going to be saved then to the track right? And actually let me pull this up and let me add this to toronto as well so you know you can do this two ways one I'm pulling it up and find her and then kind of putting two windows open and I'm dragging and dropping could do it that way or you can do it where you go inside of saraya and you click on files and then I go to the location and kind of route that way same thing in tracked you can go to files and then route to where it is that you wanna go are you going to explore in in tractor but ok, here we go so they're actually two different songs and look at how this works like one has that comment so this is the one from my tunes ah this guy right here and and uh also fi I put that into tractor which lets student tractor the other way so we'll go to, um explorer ah we're going to go to let's try music forms but at home where is that located that let me find this it's going to be a little bit trickery presence in itunes all right so this is right this is like unknown album like all right so let's just do it this way faster by dragging into a deck two it's going by default put it into put it into my general collection so it's not going put into a particular full of butter put it into my general collection track collection and here it is on the bottom dc right here so these air the two this one is the one with the album art so this is the one from itunes um and if I scroll over that's interesting it's not pulling the rating the star rating from itunes um so that's interesting um I guess if you do rely on this star rating maybe that won't come over then in tractor so that maybe is a separate rating system in tractor that you'll have to do um everything else though did come over like the comment field came over the genre came over all that other information that we then tag is that made meta data inside of the mp three and that then is like universal that then is being shared amongst all of these pieces of software but there are certain things that are specific so like your two point and your loops and all of that information is being stored to not to the empathy mp three in particular, but it's sort of this hidden meda data inside of cerrado hidden meta data inside of tractor. So just good information, good to know that side of it. Um, cool, this is this is the gist of, like, file management and, like, sort of the way tio keep things organized. Um, there's, another feature that I do want to show you, which is preparation. So in a lot of these software programs, you have the ability to, like, prepare music. So you set up almost like, what is a temporary playlist in cerrado in tractor it's actually, just another list that is like a prep list that then you can add things to this list. So it's a good wave if you're like, I use this a lot when I'm like trying to, like, prepped for a gig, and I'm going through my music, and I'm like, yep, we'll probably put that yep want to play that? Yep, that might work. Yes, that's, maybe, and like you're kind of like adding things to a list, there's quick key shortcuts for this one would be here's the prepare window in cerrado so far has to go through all and I just want to start selecting stuff that I am wanting to play so this is sorting by b p m right now so I'm just going to go and I'm just going to start like clicking on things and putting in into the prepare window I'm just randomly grabbing things okay so then I've got all of this in a prepare one no and now what I can do is now I can move this over to a crate and it will move everything over so it's a lot quicker by doing that so my shortcut keys were command p which would then add toe prep list and it's the same shortcut in tractor um and in tractor though you select an actual so I can select a crate I mean ah playlist serve I select as preparation list so now this entire list then becomes a prep list so if I go in and I start taking music which I don't think there's a lot inside of here but you know there's a few tracks so command p is going to add it to the to the prep list didn't not embassy I might need to set that shortcut so good ok so here since we got a little bit time to I'm gonna I'll show you how to do this inside tractors for any of you their tractor users um this might look familiar you in tractor you have the ability of like customizing every a bit of it. So almost every function can be assigned to a keystroke can be assigned to a middie controller. The one thing that I, this is the hole, this is the default for all of your commands. So it's, this is what everything is doing. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna make a add in aa browser list ada's next to preparation list that's what I want to do but you can see how many commands you can actually control here, but I'm going to do that. That is nice to preparation list my I'm gonna learn command p that's going to do that button trigger global all that looks good. So now deep acid control p that should add that to yep, there it is. So it's adding it all toe to prep and so that and then I can then select something else is a preparation list if I want and sort of add things in that way. But it's a very it's, much quicker than doing this, then like going to your track collection and then like, I'm going to drag and try and find this and it's going to go here like that will take you forever if you're sitting there and doing that for every single song that you're doing.