So I did a quick search and didn’t find anything (maybe I just failed my search), but I can’t figure out how to sort my tracks in Traktor. Genre sounded like a good idea, until I realized most of my tracks are House, Electro, or Dutch. That makes it sort of useless to sort by genre!
I tried sorting by my own “sub-genres” that I made up, but that got ridiculous because I couldn’t really figure out how to reliably sub-categorize my own tracks reliably (I kept coming up with new ideas for genres that didn’t make sense after the fact).
I was thinking BPM, but lol125-130. Completely useless there as well. With a lot of mixes or things I DL having a bunch of random artists/remixers, it’s impossible to sort by that method for a majority of my tracks.
Argh - this is just really confusing. I’d love some help with this! I just can’t find what “works” for me, and if I get some examples of what others try to sort their huge collections, I may be able to start coming up with something that WILL in fact work out.
I have an energy column that I can use to separate higher energy tracks from lower energy. Some people use the star rating for this. I use the comment 2 field and assign each track a number from 1-10.
There was a couple of good articles on the blog a while back that Ean did about sorting your music in iTunes. The principles will apply to what you want to do. Do a search of the blog for iTunes.
Also to sort by BPM or genre (or track name, year, etc) you just have to click the top of the column and it will sort by that tag.
Based on my little experience the best sort categories/titles are the ones that feel close to your music style and playing. So don’t hesitate to let’s say rename some tracks that are let’s say labelled tech house in MP3 to techno and so on if that feels right for you.
Me thinks there are three things that are important to keep track of:
Style – so you know what you play and how to build a similar-sounding playlist.
BPM – so you avoid huge clashes in the tempo. The time-stretching algorithms can just do some before it all starts to sound awkward.
Energy - usually good to mark softer-sounding tracks so you don’t introduce them between two hard-energy ones.
The rest is the nice but of lesser need, like date inserted (so you keep track of new tracks versus old ones), Artist/label and so on.
PS: I would also recommend watching the first 10 minutes of the Roger Sanchez video
where he is asked about how he organizes tracks for playback, 8:55 forward. I like the 10-track grouping myself, like making custom compilation albums to be used later in DJ sets.
A work in progress. and a very time consuming task but i have been slowly getting on top of it. :eek:
I use a number of programs to sort my id3 tags and add info to my tracks
they are as follows
itunes
windows media player (actually prefer this more than itunes)
mp3tag
mixed in key
mp3 gain
on my harddrive I have folders for
-80’s 90’s pop
-80’s 90,s rock
-80’s 90’s hiphop/rap/rnb
-2000+ pop
-2000+ rock
-2000+ hiphop/rap/rnb
-Dance/Club
-EDM (all genres)
-Drum & Bass
-Top remixes
-Acapellas
-Traktor
This is what I have stripped down to for now. trying to keep it simple and branch out form there. obviously some of these folders will be very broad so my next step is to go through the folders and add sub catagories. eg. in the EDM I will make folders for tech house, progressive, electro, etc…
Inside of traktor
-track name
-artist
-BPM
-key
-star rating (1 star being low energy , 5 star being peak energy)
-comment (1 or 2 words as a reference for myself only. eg. Zoink, funky, rolling, bounce, female vocals, any word or sound that I associate with the track)
-genre
-cover art
-import date
-bitrate.
I am trying to stick to the rule TAG OFTEN, TAG EARLY
I’m starting to feel like I should have stuck with this a while back. But I’m going to go through and start attacking my collection a bit.
Oh, question about how Traktor reads the track titles - well, does it? Or does it only read tags? My titles of tracks are crazy as shit because something like zipDJ gives me crazy track names.
I just use various playlists and color coding rather than tags or ratings, its fast and works for me.
1. Date
Everything by date of purchase, else goes in the “classic” or Generic folders below.
As soon as I import into a datelist I start dragging stuff about into the various playlists.
2. Genre
-Chillout
Deep start Night
Loungey house
House
Girly house
Tech house
Minimal
Tribal beats
Deep Progressive
Progressive 1,2,3
Progressive Trance 1,2,3
Trance 1,2,3
Bigroom
Caners
Classic House
Classic Prog
Classic Trance
Club Classics
Of course some stuff falls into multiple categories, I re-orgainize and delete from the playlists as it goes out of style or want to change things up.
3. Colors
Making some generic cover art and assiging it helps with selection in traktor e.g.
Black / Blue / Purple = Darker Mood
Red = Total Bangers
Orange = Madness
Yellow = Fun hands in the air stuff.
once traktor has analysed your files, it will write according to your tags. Hence another good reason to TAG OFTEN TAG EARLY.
I have found that it is much more efficient to sort my tracks outside of traktor.
remember to check consistency when you start up traktor though, as moving files around your computer will result in traktor not being able to find your tracks.
So I started to try and rate and write a small comment (if applicable) for each track via iTunes. It’s a slow process, and a bit subjective, but I think I like it so far. I hate that I’ve been putting off mixing just because I need to sort my music, so I think I might give it up for a night because I haven’t mixed in like, 10 days, and I’m starting to miss it. -_-
Thanks for all the tips up to now - I’m hoping I can start to get a feel for this and make it happen!
