Working out the best track organization in Traktor…
I’m trying figure out a way to organize tracks in Traktor that will work the best for me.
First and most important question, is there any way in Traktor to tell if the Traktor tag has been saved to a track? I add groups of tracks at a time and most of the time after adding I can’t beatgrid all those tracks in the same sitting. So it would be nice to be able to look at the tag to see if a grid has been saved instead of loading it and looking.
Unless there’s a quick way to load it and automatically tell it’s been gridded properly. I don’t make use of any extra cue points, yet, I’m still getting used to Traktor.
How do YOU organize tracks in Traktor? In Traktor? iTunes? I used to use Serato and always did organization in Serato. I’ve heard about a lot of people using iTunes cause it’s “easier” but I have a large library that includes a lot of music-- 75% of it I would never DJ with. So I think it would be hard to weed through all that to add stuff to Traktor. I know I can make a new, seperate iTunes library, but I’ve never tried. I’d like to hear from anyone that uses iTunes for Traktor.
I leave it at those two long paragraphs for questions for now. I’m sure I’ll think of more soon.
Well you know you can import your Serato settins into Traktor. There’s a program somewhere that will do it for you.
Also, I suggest making playlists in iTunes like you would make crates. You can do everything in Traktor sure, I just find iTunes to be a solid medium to work between all different software types. (I’ve been using Ableton lately and the browser there isn’t great for DJing, so iTunes does me wonders).
I also believe there is a blog article on here about organizing your music, and someone just had a thread talking about it as well.
There are a million and one different ways to do it, just a matter of figuring out what will work best for ya.
My main issue is figuring out how to see if there’s a Traktor tag applied. I guess I could make one ‘crate’ for tracks without beatgrids then move them to another after. But I’d like to hear how you guys handle it.
And more about iTunes. I’d like to hear how you guys handle organization.
tspotter looks promising, but i never got it to work well for me .. stumbled over all sorts of bugs, then again the author is very dedicated, so these bugs might already be gone.
but on my last gig i pretty quickly ignored my prepared playlist, but i used the itunes smart playlist organization to find the tracks i ended up playing
That’s my thing. I have two areas of music-- my iTunes library consists of all types of music-- electronic, DJ mixes, industrial, alternative, rock, etc. I put this whole library on my iPod.
I have a seperate folder for all my DJ worthy music. All organized by Artist - Release [Label], all tagged, BPM’d, with artwork and the camelot key in the comments section. No way in HELL I’m loading all of this area into iTunes with the first ‘area.’
I have a folder called Crate on my PC where I put all the tracks I’m currently interested in DJing with. Since two poeple mentioned the lock thing I will check that out! Thanks all!
Just to make sure-- beatgrids are saved to the Traktor tag in the MP3 file, right? So after gridding, hitting store, and locking, that is all saved right in the MP3? Or is that in the Traktor database? It would be nice to backup the files after gridding so I never have to do it again.
Those that use iTunes, how do you access it in Traktor? Do you use iTunes for anything other than DJ worthy music? As in, do you have all music you have mixed together or do you have seperate iTunes libraries?
I play all types of House and I have my music sorted in to playlists in iTunes. I have various playlists (or crates, if you want to think of them as record boxes) which are cascaded down; for instance my main crates are Acapellas & loops, classic, Deep, Dubs, Vocal house, progressive etc…
Inside these crates the music is once again separated in to other sections, sometimes BPM (ie 120-124bpm), sometimes certain record labels. Once I’m on to the crate I want I then set the tunes out by Key, I just find it easier to find tracks that gel together that way.
The trick is to find something that suits you, trial and error is a fantastic way of learning but do in the house and not in the club.
I just use manual folders in my documents/my music. I’m surprised more people don’t do this, mainly because you can customize it however you want. You can make as many folders and subfolders as you like. As well, you don’t have to worry about another program being able to organize your music to your likings (ex. I didn’t like itunes because some beatport songs simply wouldn’t import for no reason).
Yeah it takes an initial bit of work to get things going and organized, but once you have it it’s very nice.
I think I fixed all the bugs you found. I also added some features which would fit in to your workflow better - Trainspotter can now respond to the currently playing track in iTunes, either searching for the track in discogs or showing the custom tagging page. You can also now create sets of dynamic playlists based on all you custom tag values in a couple of clicks.
I’m fixing bugs and making improvements fairly regularly, if anyone finds anything that’s broken or can be improved, I can usually get an update out within a few days.
You can make smart playlists in iTunes, and for tracks that you DJ with rate them as 5 stars (for example) then they will be added to that smart playlist. Traktor also recognises playlists made in iTunes so you don’t have to make a seperate library..
When i am importing new music into my traktor library i came across the same problem. The easiest way i found is locking the beatgrid after setting it up. Within traktor this will display a little lock icon in in the tracklist. This way i am always able to see which tracks a processed and which are still left.
I seperated my “DJ” music from my normal music libraries by creating a seperate folder on my harddrive and using different folders for different categories like “70s”, “80s”, “House”, “NL”(for all dutch music ), etc.
For quickly building playlists i am using winamp. By using a global hotkey for giving a track a 5 star rating you can quickly go through a long list of music and later on take the highest rating list from the winamp library and save it to a playlist.
Hey just wanted some opinions on this. Right now I’m sorting by genre. The format is: acapella, Hip Hop / or instrumental, hip hop or Club, Electro. However I feel like that’s not getting me much closer to good organization. I feel like those genres are still too broad. Anything you guys can suggest?
see my signature for a very handy way to quickly assign mp3s in iTunes to multiple playlists. You can then easily import these into Traktor.
This nicely gets round the problem of genres/subgenres (so many tunes fit into more than one category) and prevents multiple mp3 duplicates being created (everything is done via playlists).
), etc.