Hi guys,
I will shortly describe what I do when I download music. Next I have some questions in order to improve my workflow.
- I Download the song (or rip a CD with "Easy CD-DA extractor", a program mentioned by Pulse) to my main collection on an external drive. This drive has several folders and subfolders e.g. Downloads (e.g., 2015 - 04; 2015 - 05; ...); CDRIP (e.g., Boys Noize - BNR Vol 2/CD 2; ...) as well as some CD series (e.g. Serious Beats 65 - CD 3).
- I Run the songs that are downloaded through mp3val to check for errors (see Pulse his post a couple years ago).
- Complete the tags in tag & rename (works also for AIF files). Here I will give the songs that I like a star (+- 8% of the songs).
- Song that I like are copied to my hard disc drive with the same folder structure as on the external drive but only with the songs I like. E.g. The Boys Noize CD has 15 songs on the external drive but only 2 on the computer's drive.
In this way I can synchronize my computer drive with my external drive when I change things (e.g. adapt the star rating, write a comment in rekordbox, change the name when I forgot it (e.g. Chemical Brothers, The <----> The Chemical Brothers)).
- I also backup my "rated collection" on a second hard disc. Al my synchronizing and backups are done by the program syncback.
Until this point I am satisfied with what I do. From now on I am looking for improvements.
- In rekordbox I prefer to work with playlists at the moment but I am still trying to figure out if there is a better way to handle my collection. Most (80%) of my collection is tagged "electronic", so I do not really benefit from the tag "genre". I was also very confused between deep house, future house, tech house (http://electroniccurrent.com/2015/01/14/a-complete-guide-to-house-music/ , http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/ for some guidelines) so I have to do more work to make this "genre" field more useful for me.
Also my rating system is not optimal all the songs imported in Rekordbox have at least one star, so I don't really use the full range but I do not consider this as a "big" problem because my playlists are also capturing how much I like a song.
Next is the color field: When I drag a new songs in rekorbox, I always drag them in a folder "to be analyzed". One I have enough songs I always check the beatgrid and give the song a color tag. I think Brichi point out a couple years ago that it was best to start the text of the color tags with a number if you want to have the colors sorted in a particular way. My codes are: 1 warm up 2 calm house 3 heavy house 4 tech house 5 commercial/party tunes 6 elektro 7 heavy elektro 8 all time favorites.
I guess 70% has number 6 and 7 so I have to find a better use for the color field. One I am behind the CDJ's I never sort on color.
The only way I find songs when behind the CDJ's are the playlists made in Rekordbox. I have 3 playlists with songs I play almost always (Toplist, Subtop, All Time Favorites).
Next I have made some lists because I had too many elektro songs and I never could find what I wanted. My lists have the same function as the star rating. They are named Elektro +++++ Elektro ++++ .... Elektro 0. However I find it useful to pick the tracks I really like in the playlists with a lot of stars, my Elektro + list has still more than 150 songs. I also have a list "Elektro Old Polpular", where I put songs that once were popular and that the crowd will recognize (e.g. Dada Life - Happy Hands & Happy Feet) but that I don't play frequently because the song are Old and people like new things :-). Unfortunately this folder contains more than 150 songs so it is not very useful to handle with the CDJ's.
Next I have playlists with house music which are a mess due to the fact that I sometimes don't know where to put a song (progressive house, commercial house, house with vocals, pop music... ).
I also have playlists with genres I almost never play (drum&bass, 80s, 90s, dubstep, euro house,breakbeats, r&b, hip hop, trance, rock). In each of these playlist are max 20 songs because I don't really search for these genres but sometimes there is a good song and than I can put it in one of these lists.
QUESTIONS:
- Do you also use the playlists as the main source to find tracks when using the cdj's?
- Is there a better system I should use? e.g. do you make a playlist with the name of the evening and "prepare" your set with already selecting beforehand, instead of using the general "genre&rating"
type of playlists that I use?
- Other tips in order to get the collection a little bit less messy?
- Do you use beatport pro to organize your collection? I think I can do everything I want with my system (it takes more time to do it in tag & rename but I like the fact that I control things instead of a program filling out these fields).
- How do you use the color tags?
- How to know if you will play a song in the begin - middle or end of your set?
- Any tips concerning organizing, structure of the collection are welcome!
Thanks!
