Organising Tracks ??
Hi,
I’v come to a point where i need to stop downloading tracks and
start organising, beat gridding and analysing.
How do you guys organise your tracks?
If you click on advanced search and search the word organize in titles only you’ll get quite a few results with exactly what you’re looking for.
I meant in general, without using traktor..
What are the folders called that organise your tracks?
i have names like waffles, cream, cake, cookies and so on for my music folders. couse i like em sweet and tasty.
for real dude, do you really need someone to tell you how to name folders for music you bought?
I jus simply download tracks, then when I finish going through that process I then go and find songs that I think would sound great together. After that I go ahead and name it something, and there you go! Playlist / Songs organized!
yeah it’s a stupid question forgive me.. i was just intrigued how other people where organising their tracks.. but i love the waffles, cream, cake, cookies method.. might use that one..
Don’t use that one.
Be original.
I use Madras, Korma and Tikka as my folder structure. I even have a Vindaloo folder for hot tracks, and a Phall folder for scorchers!
haha..
ok my folder structure created…
the good, the bad, the ugly, the sick
psssh, so much for being original. Wanna try again?
This was also a good movie by the way
It is kind of a legit question though. People do it differently, some by genre, some by tempo, some by artists etc. Good to get a mixed audience’s perspective and then go for you own mixed version.
Personally, I’m about to re-organise my collection by key and then by tempo. SHould be able to do harmonic or tempo mix very easily then, able to find compatible track sstraight away.
That sounds like so much work! How many tracks do you have?
Yeah exactly.
In some minimal albums there are banging tracks and minimal tracks, so would this mean separating them from the album name into key or tempo folders thus potentially getting the artists all mixed up??
20 gigs of tunes can take a while to sort..
since you really seem to have no idea:
sort your tracks in playlists, it is much easier on your harddrive capacity than having every track 5 or 10 times in different folders.
i started to use the intelligent playlist in itunes, after i read the article from dj endo on dubspot, works for me, but only due to the fact that i have scanned my tracks with mixed in key and can categorize easy that way.
all hail to the king in Camelot!
A lot. BUT, I know I don’t use all for DJing. Therefore, gonna start off using the ones I know I use and build collection up from there.
Will be relatively easy actually. I just used Mixed in Key to detect the key, and then within every key folder have tempo folders like 80-90, 91-100, 101-110, 111-120, 121-130 etc.
Mixed in Key will work out key and tempo for me. I then intend on sticking the tracks in Traktor and work on beat grids to find actual temp. Hey presto.
Won’t take me too long at all. Using Mixed in Key is the only additional step really.
i’ve tried a lot of different ways of organising my tracks and I found the best way for finding the right track for ‘the moment’ is to organise by intensity. That is, low intensity is pretty minimal, not too much stuff going on (deep house or minimal tech house usually), while high intensity are the epic bangers with everything going on (Eric Prydz). I split all my tunes into 3 groups, 1 being the lowest intensity and 3 being the highest. This means there is a bit of genre overlap, e.g. I could have a low intensity tech house track with a low intensity nu-disco track. This is quite handy cos it means you aren’t limiting yourself to a genre.
In practice it works pretty well…I’ll start off with low intensity stuff and mix around in genres to keep it interesting. Then I can crank it up if I want to by going to a 2 or 3 track, and then bring it back down to keep the stamina up. On top of this you of course have key mixing. So you can stay in the 1 folder but still do key changes up to keep the energy.
It also forces you to think about the tune you just downloaded…where would I play this in a set…is it really pumping (3) or more of a builder (2)? Of course in practice you might find that a 3 is actually much more of a 2…but that’s DJing 
There’s heaps of ways to organise your music, you just have to find the way that works best for your musical ‘brain’
and obviously the main thing is to make sure it helps you find the right tune, faster.
Music organization??
I have 2 folders, Music and Shit. Just delete the Shit folder monthly.
Currently i only mix a couple genres of music.. so i order my crates by month.
This is helpful to me if i am wanting to play music that is new and current and then dip into the old crates for those tracks you just got to drop
This bit sounds pretty good. However, how “pumping” a song is can be subjective and differ by listener.
Might try this one though. If I set my folder structure as:
DJ Tunes > Intensity > Key > BPM > Tracks
In theory, I should be able to shift intensity, key and similar BPM quite easily, able to find my matching tunes straight away.
I’ve got a bit of a scatty brain so need my collection to be fairly well organised or I’m bound to forget where the gems are!
How do you determine your track intensity, out of interest? I play all genres but revolve stuff around electro/electro-house. I use anything from Beach Boys through to Bloody Beetroots, Proxy etc and anything inbetween.
Directories are so 2000. Use iTunes and metatags to keep your library and playlists organized. Import each album with care, making sure everything’s properly labeled, tagged, etc.
I always run mine through mixed in key before importing them into itunes.
seems like there’s a whole lot of different methods and processes organising tracks. I’ll probably stick to knowing the relevant tracks inside out.. and thanks for all that interesting information..
Seems like Ando was just being a big classroom bully after all - first he mentions it’s really easy to organise tracks, then elaborates ‘mixed in key’ organisation and smart itunes playlists is the way forward, which is quite a contradiction! Not sure what tracks he’s trying to organise but by the sounds of it seems like pop and britney spears.. haha just kidding man.
All hale Ando for his insightful input..