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Forum: General Discussion

Topic: How I Organize My Large Music Library in Virtual DJ, In Case You Can Benefit

Questo argomento è obsoleto e potrebbe contenere informazioni obsolete o errate.

Consider this an old person’s attempt to spread some knowledge. I am coming close to 60, don’t know how much longer I will be doing the DJ thing, and have a desire to share how I have come to cope with a very large music library. If you find this useful, that is great. Feel free to find your own way to do this, as long as it is useful to you. I don’t expect everyone to copy my work, but to use my sharing to be inspired to develop a similar method to use that best fits how they do things…

I constantly run across blogs or You Tube articles commenting on keeping your library small, so one doesn't get lost trying to find the next song. That may be fine for the young clubbing world, where 20 or 30 songs are the current interest. I do car shows, and special events that can call for music of varying genres and decades, so I carry well over 10,000 songs.

So, how do I code my music library? I’ll try to break this down. Here is an example of Keith Urban’s “Humble and Kind” - ~CountryDanceSlow,~CountryBackground,Introspective,Morality,Manners,LifeLessons,C48W4LBI,Waltz,C96W2LI

That is a long comment field! Admittedly, it is one of my longest comments. So, here we go…
• ~ - I put this in front to cue me to a song that either charted or I would play on a DJ. The Tilde (~) is not commonly used, and doesn’t conflict with other characters. No false sorts using this character. Most people don’t know what it is used for, so it is also great to use in passwords.
• Country – Music style or genre. That could be Pop, HipHop, Rock, Soul, Rap, Country, Disco. I may have a song that charted on multiple genres, so I may have more than one of these codes.
• Background – this lets me know when I might play the song. Background is good for conversational dinner parties, including wedding receptions. I also use Dance, DanceSlow (VDJ sometimes doubles the BPM), ToeTap, etc.
• Comma (,) – I separate my codes with a comma. I have many codings.
• I add other coding words for songs that have a sub-category, such as Pop with a NewJackSwing beat, or Rock with a Blues feel. I also code those “SmoothGrove” songs, like Barry White and those slow-jam soul tunes.
• Special purpose words – For those songs that need identification, like Meditational for yoga and Empowering for overcoming. I don’t like sad or cheating songs at weddings, so I add ",Sad" to be able to filter out. Playing a Christmas song in October may not go over well at a venue, so ",Christmas" goes in. Use what you like to exclude from your filter. Consider coding those special song sets, too. How many times have you started “Cupid Shuffle” and couldn’t remember that “Whip Nae Nae”, “Cha-Cha Slide” and “Stomp” would follow pretty well?
• Waltz – Special music styles are a great filter! EastCoastSwing, Samba, Waltz, ChaCha…
• C48W4LBI – That weird code I took off of CopperKnob.co.UK . If you don’t know about this site, you should! If there is a dance step to a popular song, especially a line dance, somebody has most likely submitted a choreography of dance steps. On the top is a list of the beat/step COUNT, number of turns or WALLS, and skill LEVEL So, this example is a 48 beat count using 4 walls with skill level of beginner to intermediate. Along with the BPM, this is crucial for a line dance set! When mixing into the next song, you want to finish the count, and have another song that is a similar count that flows well.
*** - Side Note - C48 is an indication of the phrase length. If you are looking to loop a section longer than 4 or 8 beats, this will give you an idea of how long the loop the loop and have the song sound like it completed the phrase (i.e. - run an 8 beat loop 6 times, for this example).
• The Year field in MP3 and Wave files is a major field for me. I have spent a lot of hours tracking down just the year a song came out. One would be amazed how difficult it is finding the year an old pre-1950s song actually released.

Creating a filter to limit the playlist to what I need to see... This is my filter to bring up popular dance music from 2010 to present...
Year>=2010 and (Comment contains "~PopDance" or Comment contains "~RockDance" or Comment contains "~NewWaveDance" or Comment contains "~HipHopDance" or Comment contains "~CountryDance" or Comment contains "~SoulDance")
. From there I can sort by BPM, and even type key words to filter that filter down even further.

This is how I can carry over 10,000 songs spanning multiple genres over some 90 years, and still be able to pull up only what I need when I need it. I am not looking for people to shred my methods. What I want to do is inspire that select few who see what I did and find that they can create their own standard to categorizing and sorting their library.

Be prepared for anything, be organized, show up on time, and play professionally!

{Had to edit to get some of the grammar cleaned up!}
 

Inviato Mon 02 Jul 18 @ 5:30 am
Thank you for sharing your method.
Some nice advices ;o)
 

Inviato Mon 02 Jul 18 @ 7:50 am
AudioMaverick wrote :
One would be amazed how difficult it is finding the year an old pre-1950s song actually released.


Yes, I'm with you there! Tagging is a time consuming business, and I still have many tracks without a genre or a year, even after DJing digitally for many years (decades!).

 

Inviato Mon 02 Jul 18 @ 5:24 pm
Great advice! I have been doing this for a long time too and tagging seems like a daily chore. Everyday i try to spend a couple hours on it. I so agree with your statements - I take so much pride on my collection - I have subscribed to promo only since conception, along with TM Century, smash vids, xmix, ultimix, funkymix, and the list goes on, I have deleted most of my duplicates but still at about 300,000. I am now referred for car shows, rare oldies, ethnic, etc. Do you know how rewarding it is when a groom asks if you can play his Grandma's song and you have it etc.
 

Inviato Mon 23 Jul 18 @ 6:29 am
JDTheDJ2... Big "Thumbs Up"! Organize When you first put the songs in, and it is done. The filters do the rest.

VDJ has so many features that make the experience that much better for the client. I am about to sound like an advertisement for going Pro, so I'll zip it...(:>)
 

Inviato Tue 24 Jul 18 @ 1:54 am


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