a DJ HAS to be organized musically

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
1

a DJ HAS to be organized musically

Hello DJTT,

Recently started cleaning up most of my music, I’ve been adding specific genres instead of just HOUSE and fixing up names etc & I also made playlists based on when I got the music

but was wondering how do yous set up your playlists..

Can you give me an example: Like a screenshot, or Names of your playlist

Thank you

2

Short and sweet version.

I start by cleaning up my filers first and then tagging them with MiK, i.e

Artist - Track (Remixer) - Key - BPM

Then I run them through a program that’s tags all the proper ID3 info so Traktor reads it properly

I then organize my files by genre, i.e. tech house, minimal, techno, soulful house, stripped back and so on.

From there I organize the tracks by the feeling/groove energy it has. i.e. early, opening, atmosphere, late, peak and so on.

So now I can pop in any folder, sort that folder by key, and start playing songs and not worry about it. Half the time I don’t even know the track I’m playing, but I know it must belong in here and I’ve had to listen to it three times before it ends up in it’s right location.

This works great at the beginning of the night, but when it comes to peak time I obviously know those tunes and know how to work. Just at the beginning/middle of the night I’m more concerned about the groove and vibe and not so much about the specific tracks

3

Thanks for that dude, very smart way of organizing your collection! BTW what program do you use to run your songs for Traktor?

4

thanks Nephew for helping me out on organizing, good method

anyone else wanna share their method?

5

For me in Traktor I have like 5 major playlists of “general” genre:

House
Prog
Techno
Trance
Breaks

I’ve successully placed 1000+ tracks into at least one of these general genre playlists. Im now going through all of them and tagging them in the comments section with their feel and characteristics (i.e. funky, banging, beach, heart, bass, etc)

During this process Im also cleaning out the collection to remove tracks I never or rarely play.

My goal is to have a general quick reference for the playlists to go to and then be able to narrow things down based on the characteristics of the music and how they make me feel or vibe they produce. In traktor that little search box above the preview button brings the tracks up by their keywords immediately at once!

6

Basically I play mainly hip hop and electroish house, all of those tracks are in one playlist which is about 1200 songs, I label specific tracks on how they feel, like “Bmore” or “banger” “downtempo” etc, then I have seperate playlists for genres that I have less music of/ dont often play like “dancehall/reggae” “New Jack Swing” “80s/90s”

and thats pretty much it. I jump around genres a lot so its helpful to just be able to sort by bpm in one big playlist and then I just play whatever catches my eye

7

My issue right now i have way too many sub-genres:

DANCE:
Breakbeats - Afrika Bamb
Booty Music - 2 Live Crew
Top 40 - Pitbull
etc.

Hip-Hop:
Old School (beastie boys, rakim, epmd)
Classic - Biggie, Nas,
Top 40 - Lil Wayne, Kanye

House
Tech House
Deep
Trendy
Tribal
etc.

It makes it easy to go to main crate and find songs within the subcrates and bounc around styles, but it’s alot of folders. There’s also disco, retro, reggae, etc. I do this all thru Itunes, but can’t figure out a good way to bring in crates ands subcrates (sub folders) into Traktor. Itch does this great with Itunes. Then I just use the ratings stars. 5 = banger 4= really good 3 = warm up, 2 = filler. anything else I delete aftera while because I know I’ll never play it (some I keep just incase of requests).

So i can go to my hip hop main folder sort all my 4’s and 5’s and bounce from old school to lil wayne rather easily. I still have to get on MIK and do the key stuff.

It’s time consuming for sure.

8

i was really organized for awhile but have recently fallen back into my old habits lol… so i’ll share how my method from when i am organized heheh

-first it’s organized by date(Month/Year) folder

  • then inside the date folder is genres (electro/house, techno, breaks, dubstep, idm/glitchhop, d&b, hiphop, nudisco, and other(usually indie rock, experimental and oldies)

-within the genre folders i also have a “AAA” folder for the songs that stand out to me most so i can easily access them if i forget their names (which is more often than not)

i avoid breaking it down even further into sub-genres or by artist/album/ep. so long as everything is divided up amongst their major genre branches and more importantly, the date i acquired them, that is more than adequate for me.

9

/quick
/quick list
/frequent

these names could work and they would be up top

10

I’ve recently started using iTunes’ Smart Playlist function for creating playlists based on genres. I tag all my music with the correct genre, then I make lists with parameters like “genre is house or progressive house but not electro house” etc. I also make sure to only include “checked items” so that I can uncheck songs that don’t belong on a dance floor or that I really don’t want to play.

I also use ratings.

If you use iTunes for music managing this might be useful for you.

11

All great info. Thanks a lot.

12

While the idea has been touched on, it wasn’t specifically mentioned (and it sounds kinda lame) but it’s what I do

I comment on the “darkness” or how “light” or “bright” a song is, coupled with a selection of primary colors I feel would be combined in a lightshow, if one were going and dedicated to that song, and the first color usually being the main color, with subsequent colors adding in some flavor. I used to code with “orange,” “aqua,” “purple,” etc, but was very inconsistent and found primary colors made it easier to transition from a dark set to a light set as you increase bpm, energy, etc.

9a - deep dark red blue – would be something like a dimly lit blood / purple vibe
8a - bright yellow red – something like a high energy dance

gives me something to shoot for when i want to keep the styles of the songs the same while mixing in key.

this method, used in conjunction with

http://www.crayonroom.com/moody.php

has sped up my commenting / rating process immensely. you can rename the colors seen in the screenshots to incorporate the above process, and it allows you to preselect songs based on how you color-coded them.

2c

13

:eek: Never been into visuals much but this is crazy cool.

14

not sure what you mean

15

basically the most recent songs that you like and what quick access to…you throw it into the AAA playlist, or if your going through your library and found a gem :wink:

16

aaah okay. gotcha

17

anyone else want to add their organization? im loving peoples ideas

maybe a screenshot or 2 :smiley:

18

I was using my Windows music library until now, and organized everying into files by gendre, and giving no’s to each folder ie; (Funky house 1) (Funky house 2) and so on. I no them according to how old they are, the latest ones being the higher no’s. Although recently under suggestion from Karlos Santos I downloaded Itunes, and started to organize everything there. I think I just started a big challenge, thats gonna take me hours to sort out, but once done will be much easier or me I think.

19

Is there a way of organising tracks in Itunes by key? I’ve never used it before, but downloaded it because of everyone’s recommendations here, but I haven’t found any way of showing the key of the song.

I normally run my tracks through Mixed in Key then sort them out that way using windows files (Initial Key).

20

you cant display the “key” field in itunes
i place the key in the front of the comments, so sorting by comments takes care of that
or just searching for a track with "9a " … and itll list it