How organized are you with your sets?

I have a few playlists whit music I most probable will play. and listen to them every now and then removing what gets old or not so hot. When I get new songs I add them to one of those playlistes depending on energie or style. All my playlistes are under 150 tracks.
It's all songs that will work depenting on what crowed shows up.

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Originally Posted by shr3dder

Completely wing it myself. Never been one for too much pre-planning, takes the fun out of it.

I have a playlist or two usually (some newer stuff, stuff I want to try fit in) and a well tagged library (key, bpm and genre) that's it, I treat it like when I played records, I can just take more with me. I use the "Preparation List" playlist a lot each gig, kinda like throwing the records in a pile.

Never been one for intensity levels or notes on tracks, I just don't see the point personally.

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I am exactly the same. Look around my library, find tracks I like, add them to prep playlist. Then play from the prep playlist. Got a couple of playlists (Newest releases, classics etc.) but other than that I wing it.

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Originally Posted by Vandalus

I listen to all of my new tracks and assign them a rating on the 1-5 star scale: 1 star = early mood tracks / these are great for a warmup set. 3 star = great middle of the road tracks, can play all night/day with these. 60% or so are in this classification probably, if not more. 5 stars = massive peak time tracks.

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I like the idea of this, and definately will have to look more into it. I'm assuming, still categorized by genre, yet at the same time sub-folders based for rating?

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Originally Posted by Patch

I am REALLY considering starting to use iTunes for my library, and setting up a whole bunch of smart playlists... I know that time spent doing that will REALLY pay off!

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Just this month started to import into Itunes first after going straight into Traktor. Cannot believe how much time it saves when organizing your folder's. :w00t:

I have set up a lot of smart playlist's according to import date, day week, month as well as variations on this sub genre rating etc. This now allows me to import form the iTunes library into the relevant traktor folders.
Also if I forget the track name, artist I can then use the smart playlists 'on the fly' to find them again.

Smart lists are blowing me away right now - you can set up smart lists based on key. That means you can do a search ONLY on those tracks are key compatible and similar tempo, or, the bit that pricked my ears up, compatible keys for energy boosts or energy drops...

I can't decide if I want to install iTunes on my DAW, though...

All my tracks are between 100-130bpm so i have my songs in playlists according to genre

Generic Commercial Electro (ministry of sound kinda stuff)

House

Tech & Progressive (Not that much of this)

Electronica & French (justice, sebastiAn etc.) - Genre i mainly play

and in a seperate wallet i have dubstep and other stuff

my crates are all by genre and then left in order by bpm, but i use seratos colors to indicate hot tracks that go down well or i us ethe comment section to make associations (like dancehall riddims i can drop) i really just read the crowd, i dont plan muchcos every wekk the crowd is a lil diffrent like last week it was all 90's hiphop type of crowd but the week before they were viben on dubstep so i just work my genres by bpm and find what they bite on and then i work em like 2 dollar hoe's till they call last orders

Complete seat of the pants from a crate.

I use iTunes to manage digital music and use a combination of sorting my entire library by "Date added", some smart playlists (genres, tempos, comments, etc.), and a few manual playlists to make a "crate" for the night (as another playlist with just the date as its title) that Serato sees automatically. On Traktor, I'd do the same thing and import the playlist to my Traktor collection as a new Traktor Playlist and play from that.

If I want to move out of it, I can. Though, I usually don't.

Basically…it's exactly the same process as when I was on vinyl except that the computer is doing the sorting and searching for me.

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Originally Posted by mostapha

On Traktor, I'd do the same thing and import the playlist to my Traktor collection as a new Traktor Playlist and play from that.

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Why would you import it as a Traktor Playlist? I pretty much play exclusively from the iTunes node in Traktor, no need to import anything. As long as you don't need to edit tags in Traktor (which I don't really see why you would - except if you're one of those "notes in a comment field" guys) the iTunes integration is sufficient.

I usually have a 200 tracks "crate" that 'moves' each month + an essential crate (my kinda best of if you prefer).
When I start a set live I know where I start and where I want to end (my first or two first tracks and my last ones). So I know roughly the path I want to take. If I play (or playED actually - that was a long time ago) after someone I usually go with the flow but then play one my track as a kind of reset (not something that I've produced, I mean a track that really fits my style or the music I play, a fx sound or a piece that 'mark' my take over the decks.).
I also have at least one or two times with some technical routines (technical may be too strong a word but something that is a bit technic whatever that is and that I may have rehearsed before).
I also consult from time to time previous playlists from sets I made.

etc, etc..