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rekordbox

Rekordbox 5 music management

As a new rb 5 user I am looking for some guidance on setting up my music folders. I have looked at the forums, videos and the out of date manual at the time of this original post and found bits and pieces of answers but not much on rb 5 yet. I am on a mac and will not be using iTunes. (The 5.4 manual is now online :)

My questions include:

1 Pros and cons of of putting all my music in one folder on hd vs subfolder organization on the HD? Isn’t that just duplicating what RB is doing? I also like the idea of easily being able to move this single folder.

2 Samples and saved loops created in rb go to the PioneerDJ folder that is by default in the Music folder on my HD. If I want my rb library in one place what do I do with this folder?

3 Best place to put samples I have created outside of rb

4 Best place to put sample packs I have purchased from 3rd parties

5 What is the difference between the sample list and the sample folders in treeview? How do samples ‘know’ they are part of ‘All Samples’ under Sampler in treeview?

6 If you cannot yet save and load entire sample banks but may be able to in the future, how does that effect the above?

7 Is the basic idea to create playlists in rb as the main nav tool and then use intelligent playlists to augment those?

8 Is it a better user experience to use the my tag feature or standard id tags within rb. I am assuming reg id tags will then be part of file and my tags will not be. If I am throwing all my eggs into the rb basket, do I really need to care about id tags anymore? What are peoples’ workflow in terms of tagging in rb5?

9 I get the concept of the collections view but it would be great to be able to filter out samples from this view as they make it a much less effective tool. Is this possible?

Thanks for any info on the above.

Aux October 19, 2018 13:21

Official comment

In response to both your post and @Ves...

1) Putting things all in one folder is asking for a sh!t-show of music organization. Find a way to sort your music and stick with it, whether it's by source, date, whatever. Personally, I put everything on an external drive, and then it's sorted by the source, then date:

X:\Music\PromoOnly\2018-October\Artist-Song (Mix).xyz
X:\Music\Beatport\2018-October\Artist-Song (Mix).xyz
X:\Music\iTunes\2018-October\Artist\Artist-Song (Mix).xyz

2) As noted; change the path.

3) X:\Music\Samples\

4) See #1.

5) They come from the sample folder.

6) It doesn't; much like a hot cue bank can load memory points from across different tracks, a "sample bank" would simply load all samples from that bank, regardless of their location.

7) Both.

8) Again, both. It's all based on how you need to use it. Are you needing to find tracks by energy level, or time of night? If so, use those tags.

9) Do you really have that many samples within the collection that it's making the collection confusing to navigate? As @Ves says, make a tag for it and exclude it by way of a filter.

Pulse October 20, 2018 19:21

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Hi Jonathan,

I'll try to answer some of your questions to the best of my knowledge.

1: Having all the tracks in one folder without additional sub creates will have Dj software preform better. as the file paths are kept short.

2: In Preferences > Controller > Sampler you can change the path so it goes into the folder where you have all your tracks.

3: I personally have a Tools folder where all my samples go in. Something like that should work

4: Same as 3

7: This depends how you use it. The track/category filter can be seen as the main navigation tool if your tags are done properly. Intelligent playlists are definitely something extra as they can be dynamic as it automatically adds/removes tracks based on parameters while regular playlist are more static.

8: It is best to use the ID3 tags but from outside Rekordbox to make the needed adjustments. Like [90s][Banger] or Energy 5/Lounge.By having these in the ID tag they will be readable by any DJ software you change to and you never have to change your method when you switch platform. However investing into platform can have it benefits as you will use the full potential of the DJ software. In the case of Rekordbox DJ, My Tags will allow you to better define which tracks you need while using the filter.

There is an option in preferences to have My Tags save to the comments section in the ID3 tag.

Once I have sorted the filename I do all my tagging in RB.

9: A workaround would be to tag the samples in the genre as Tools/Sample and use the filter to exclude them.But I agree having these in a separate view from the regular music tracks would be great, similar to how Traktor has it.

Ves October 20, 2018 10:58 0 votes

Thank you for the excellent info on all 9 of the above. It has made my first forays into RBDJ much more efficient and enjoyable. Hopefully this will help others just starting out as well.

Below is just some fyi for any newbies checking in:

For #1, I am going with a highbred system by keeping a relatively small number of tracks in RB in regular playlists and keeping those in one folder on my HD. Outside of RB, I am going with a folder structure. For edm tracks I think the

X:\Music\PromoOnly\2018-October\Artist-Song (Mix).xyz

etc.. folder structure is very smart. For my open format library, a more stylistic approach seems to work better for my brain.

X:\Music\Classic Country\Female\Artist-Song.xyz

For # 5, the 'sample list' is just a playlist for samples. A 'folder' contains the lists.

For # 8, I will see how things evolve. For now I am cleaning up file names with Yate as 'Artist - Track name' and leaving comments empty. I have set RB to write 'my tags' to comments.

For # 9 Yes I may end up with a large number of samples. Not clear on how to exclude tracks with the filters. I have posted this ? in a new post.

Thanks again

Aux October 23, 2018 19:26 0 votes