Sharing my Music sorting procedure

I was asked the following question by a member and with my long reply, I though it would be decent to share with you all.

a lot has been covered, & there may be some stuff people can add :)

Some of it is very noobish, but I wanted to explain in its entireity :o

This is how I do it & may be of help & guidence to some.

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hey man, so you're just making playlists in itunes and using those when doing your sets?

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Yes.

My procedure as of late has been a long but rewarding one.

Once I got the hang of itunes (wasn't a fan at first but with some tweaking, ie settings so it dosn't duplicate all my tracks etc.) I'm a fanboy :D

Once I download a track I do the following (some is personal preference)

- ananlyse in Mp3Gain
- analyse in MIXED IN KEY
- drag to itunes (finalise tags & give rating)
- Import to traktor (there are a few steps I go to before this, as follows)

Once in itunes I select the track, right click & then select get info. (this is where I make sure all my tagging is up to date, mainly genre & key for the smart playlists)

NOTE: I also give my tracks another listen & give a rating. I keep it simple and relevants across the genres rather than specific ratings for each catagory.

1 star = soft/mellow/chillaxed etc.. through to 5 star = the big Big heavy hitters etc.

Inside of itunes I have smart playlists of all my genres. So once a track is tagged it will automatically put it in its specific smart playlist.

smart playlists are great as it keeps things organised.

then it is just a matter of creating any playlist you want and dragging your tracks into that. wala :D:D

A good rule to follw once you get on top of all your tags is what I stick to , it was in the blog a while ago.

TAG OFTEN, TAG EARLY.

now this has been a tedious progress as I have rinsed and repeated many times till I was happy with the results. But once I got use to itunes it all fell into place.

1st thing I would recomend, and what i did is in the following order.

- clear traktors collection and update.
- clear itunes collection and update

- fine tune all your preferred settings in traktor and export the tsi file (you will find the big export button at the bottom of setting) this way you always have that clean slate to fall back on

- fine tune all itunes settings

so now everything is a clean slate to make a fresh start. this is a big help IMO.

Next steps

- import all your tracks to itunes
- create smart playlists ( I have everything from pop, rock, easy listening, drum & bass, tech house, psy/goa, House etc...) you will see these fill up as you go.

sounds daunting but itunes sorts this out for you based on the tags
here is a good link SMART PLAYLISTS

- from here I can make my own playlists a lot quicker by browsing through the smart playlists

take your time with it so you only have to do it once, it may take a few nights and a few cold ones, and mayby a bit of nagging form the wife in regard's spending no quality time together, but thats another story ;)

I even make sure all my genres are listed the same. lets use Hip Hop & Rap for an example..

*sometimes it is tagged as hip-hop/rap and sometimes it is tagged with rap & hip hop or whatever. you can select all of them in itunes at once and change so the tags are the same. same procedure select all and choose get info, itunes will ask if you want to change multiple files, select YES then you can change and fine tune the genre. (it is impotant that you only do this for Genre though) eg. Rap/Hip-Hop, this will keep things even tidyer and narrow down your smart playlists. with all the sub genres these days, it can get a bit confusing. :confused:


So now you have everything sorted. thankgod :D you can move onto traktor.

close itunes as you can access this through traktors browser.

Inside of traktor in the browse column, scroll down to itunes and select, you will now see all of your hardwork inside of itunes, including playlists and subfolders. hooray :)

you can then select on a folder and import to collection, traktor works better and smoother when tracks are imported to collection.

you only need to import once, and once you have you can browse through your itunes folders and play form there.

On a side note, it is not uncommen for me to clear traktors collection on occasion and only import what I need. (also best done prior to performance)

Also another good thing to have selected in traktor is to check consistency on start up. A consistency check will show you what tracks are missing then you can reimport the missing ones
*missing tracks are caused by moving files in your hard drive* dont panic though as traktor is only a host and does not actually store your track, simply points to & plays them from the location on your Hard drive/computer.

I hope This has been of some help.

Good luck & always happy to help to the best of my knowledge :D


P.S. a special thanks to all the forum members who I have gained this handy information from. and thankyou to the community for making it a great place to be a part of. THANKYOU :D :p

hey mate, at what volume level do you recommend setting the tracks to?

this is a great insight Zaniac, thanks for taking the time to post

Thanks for the tips mate. I didnt realize that by clicking get info it would grab the MIK key tag. I've been using regular playlist for a while mainly to sort out new sets. Never really got my head around multi tagging till now to get into smart playlists but I'll have to give it a crack.

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Originally Posted by DeepPeeps

hey mate, at what volume level do you recommend setting the tracks to?

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I stated at 96db after reading this article from the blog.
get the most out of your music library

I Now use 94db with autogain turned off & find I have best results

Here are a couple more threads I would recommend reading if interested.
this one
That one

thanks zaniac, I watched the smart playlist video but I feel dj Endo over does it with the smart playlist system.

For me smart playlist is a way to find tracks to use in a set easier and make a playable playlist, but that guy has so many smart playlist he might as well not have any at all. In my opinion its like he doesn't know how to find tracks, or how he usually finds tracks and so in turn has tried to organize EVERY possibility in case he changes the way he does things, it was truly insane the amount of parameters he has.

so just to be sure, mp3 gain will change the levels of the mp3 and save it at the files source, and when you import those mp3's into itunes, itunes also saves them at this level? as I tried it and it said a bunch of the tracks already were clipping (is that indicated by the red 'y'?) so I re-did the levels at 86db but in itunes I still feel there is a noticeable difference between the levels of some tracks.

EDIT* Just another thing, since I have already run about 30 tracks through at 86 and would now prefer to shift it to around 94 as thats seems to be the general go, can a run them through again at 96 and would those levels then be updated in itunes automatically?

ha ha, yeah endo's is intense.

I only have Smart lists of GENRE, KEY, KEYED OPTIONS

The rest I make my own.

make sure you have clipping turned off, there is a few that still clip and is causing some confusion as discussed IN THIS THREAD

Thank you for sharing your method. I can't use itunes with the music format 90% of my tunes are in. :(

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Originally Posted by Kaek

Thank you for sharing your method. I can't use itunes with the music format 90% of my tunes are in. :(

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What format are your tunes in? There are tools out there to convert. Unless your talking vinyl? :)

flac or oggvorbis most likely

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Originally Posted by Zaniac

On a side note, it is not uncommen for me to clear traktors collection on occasion and only import what I need. (also best done prior to performance)


P.S. a special thanks to all the forum members who I have gained this handy information from. and thankyou to the community for making it a great place to be a part of. THANKYOU :D :p

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Noob question... wouldn't you loose your cue points and stuff if you cleared your collection?
....and....
well said,
DJ Tech Tools is awesome. filled with bright people who are very helpful.

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Originally Posted by pbcrazy9898

Noob question... wouldn't you loose your cue points and stuff if you cleared your collection?

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Good question, but all of the cues points, grids etc are saved in the id3 tag of the track. So clearing Traktors collection is fine.

good tips. I've been thinking about a way to unify my music collection under iTunes. At the moment I use Traktor, iTunes and rekordbox and it's all a bit time consuming. I'd rather use iTunes because the smart playlist thing is cool. The only problem is I HATE iTunes. I guess I'll just have to get over that :p

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Originally Posted by sebastiannz

The only problem is I HATE iTunes. I guess I'll just have to get over that :p

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I was in this boat as well. Now Im a fanboy.

Once you set up the smart playlists its all too easy.

For example Im on a tech house buzz. And have been building my library. now that I have a genre smartplayist, as soon as I drag a tech house tracks into itunes it goes straight to the tech house playlist. From there I can search by date added etc...

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Originally Posted by Zaniac

I was in this boat as well. Now Im a fanboy.

Once you set up the smart playlists its all too easy.

For example Im on a tech house buzz. And have been building my library. now that I have a genre smartplayist, as soon as I drag a tech house tracks into itunes it goes straight to the tech house playlist. From there I can search by date added etc...

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yeah the smart playlists thing is cool and traktor doesn't have that. At the moment I have three different folders for different eneryg levels (1 = low energy, 3 = high), and I drag and drop mp3s into each of these folders. Once they are in the correct folder I drag and drop them into Traktor. It is a bit slower than smart playlists would be! It is also far less dynamic in the event I want to create a folder outside this concept. I.e. a 'tech house' folder. Dragging and dropping files is too awkward compared to group-editing tags.

:^ just be sure to set up all itunes preferences the way you want to before you get right into it. Eg. the main reason I avoided itunes to begin with is that i didnt want it to duplicate my music as I dont buy a lot from itunes. But now I have set my options to not duplicate. That little hurdle holding me back is now gone. Ah the simple things :D

P.S are you a Wellington local. I am from Wellington myself (Wainuiomata)

Thanks for writing this up! I've been meaning to clean up my library but haven't gotten around to it yet. I really like the idea of having chill tracks and your dance bangers/anthems organized.

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Originally Posted by Zaniac

P.S are you a Wellington local. I am from Wellington myself (Wainuiomata)

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yep I'm from mt vic! you play out around here much? there are some good house gigs on these days.. mi casa tu casa, what happened to the techno, etc.

I left Wellington mid 2007 Im creeping up 30 now. back when I was running reckless around town there was a big group of my friends who played and partied all night to Hardhouse. as much as I enjoyed that scene, I would always drop it for a good gig of breaks & d&b at my favourite club in town (also where I met my wife) Sandwidges.

More often than not you would find me there ripping up the D floor :D (albiet awkwardly flapping my arms around lol)

sandwiches is still going strong :) they added a mexican restaurant into the bar bit, which is a bit weird (good nachos though).

soo... was just about to start setting up iTunes and then realised when in traktor that they still haven't added in the cover art column in the browse area. or is that just my traktor being crap?

2 questions....are you a windows user?

From that, does changes tags in itunes update your windows music file?

When running traktor does itunes have to be open to use your method or can importing the collection from traktor then nullify the need for itunes?

I'm using a mac. If I change a tag in iTunes and then click refresh in traktor, it will show up. THe cover art shows up in the player window just not in the crate flick thing down the bottom right of the screen. I'm not sure if this is a 'feature' or not.

@ rukks. Im a windows user, yes changing tags in itunes updates in your music file. & no itunes dosnt need to be open when using traktor, it is simply a way to sort and can then be used through traktors browser. however there are a couple of things missing as stated below in next post :)

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Originally Posted by sebastiannz

soo... was just about to start setting up iTunes and then realised when in traktor that they still haven't added in the cover art column in the browse area. or is that just my traktor being crap?

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this has me stumped to, as I do like to browse with album covers as a help.

2 things I have noticed when browsing itunes in traktor is that cover art in not there unless you browse through track collection.

& also key does not show, In the comment field it does, but not actual key column.

there are still a few traktor to itunes intergration that need ironing out. but its still a win.

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Originally Posted by Zaniac

this has me stumped to, as I do like to browse with album covers as a help.

2 things I have noticed when browsing itunes in traktor is that cover art in not there unless you browse through track collection.

& also key does not show, In the comment field it does, but not actual key column.

there are still a few traktor to itunes intergration that need ironing out. but its still a win.

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yeah it's weird, cos the cover art does show up in the deck panel. hmm... come on NI sort it out! :)

i'm now trying to figure out how to work iTunes into rekordbox process.

I think best way is to use iTunes as the central hub, and think of rekordbox and Traktor as extensions.

Cover art will not show up when browsing the iTunes node. it used to, but NI got flooded with complaints about it so they took it out.

It involved Traktor retrieving the cover art for loads of tunes at once and things grinding to a halt, from what I remember. I think NI covered the issue in one of the 'On the Record' sessions.

well that explains that

as i've pretty much switches to using itunes now and had been thinking of whether it's worth trying some key-detection app for a while... is beatunes the way to go over mixed in key or rapid evolution... not worried which gets more keys right compared to others (tho have read the blog article on them) or what notation they use too much... with now using itunes beatunes would be the best app to buy? it's also only about 30$ i think so not bad.

zestoi I dont use beatunes and dont have any knowledge of it to offer my opinion sorry.

I am happy with Mixed in key 4, not planning on upgrading to MIK5 for now.

going to check the blog as there was a write up on a few. will be back with a result for ya soon

found it. here we go Key analysis software reviews

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Originally Posted by Zaniac

zestoi I dont use beatunes and dont have any knowledge of it to offer my opinion sorry.

I am happy with Mixed in key 4, not planning on upgrading to MIK5 for now.

going to check the blog as there was a write up on a few. will be back with a result for ya soon

found it. here we go Key analysis software reviews

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cheers... (and for the pm). i think i'll try beatunes... at 30$ it's probably less costly to buy a copy than spend too much time worry about the pros and cons ;)

i was putting off buying mik as it's not quite so cheap - but now i'm using itunes the beatunes app seems a better fit anyway. time will tell i guess...

Does anyone know how to transfer the info I currently have in the 'Comments' field to the 'Key' field that shows up in Traktor and rekordbox? The mp3 tagging software I've tried (id3 editor, Jaikoz and media rage) don't have the option of adding to the 'Key' field. I want to do this so when I use cdjs I can scroll through tracks by the key option.

Scratch that, id3 editor can do this :)

Hey Zaniac,
had some problems with tractor losing my cue points and loops i'd created after i replaced my hard drive, so i'm thinking to try out your method and sort out my iTunes library..just wondered if you're still using this method with no changes etc? thanks!

if anyone can help with this, would be much appreciated -

so i'm going to clear my iTunes and tractor collections and import all my music in again, with the method Zaniac describes here...
as i'll be bringing the tunes in bit by bit, i.e. album by album etc to analyse, write tags etc...is there a method anyone can suggest to notice if i have any corrupt files at the same time? it seems like this would be a good time to get rid of those if i'm doing the rest of the processes.
many thanks in advance!

The day iTunes supports FLAC I'll use iTunes. I love the smart playlists, but I've ripped 100s of old vinyl tracks in FLAC....

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Originally Posted by Mad Abbott

Hey Zaniac,
had some problems with tractor losing my cue points and loops i'd created after i replaced my hard drive, so i'm thinking to try out your method and sort out my iTunes library..just wondered if you're still using this method with no changes etc? thanks!

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I'm pretty much a creature of habit when it comes to this process mate. I find it helps me to just enjoy the music when having a jam. . so yes still using this procedure. I just make sure I do all of the steps before loading into traktor.

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Originally Posted by shr3dder

The day iTunes supports FLAC I'll use iTunes. I love the smart playlists, but I've ripped 100s of old vinyl tracks in FLAC....

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But being lossless, if you used a decent encoder, transcoding to another lossless format should not impair the quality at all. I used flac for some time then got frustrated and went to ALAC.