{"id":3156,"date":"2015-03-23T13:25:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T20:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mp3poolonline.com\/blog\/?p=3156"},"modified":"2015-03-23T13:25:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T20:25:41","slug":"tame-the-beast-take-control-of-your-digital-music-collection-via-dj-techtools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mp3poolonline.com\/blog\/tame-the-beast-take-control-of-your-digital-music-collection-via-dj-techtools\/","title":{"rendered":"Tame The Beast: Take Control of Your Digital Music Collection Via Dj TechTools"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Digital music collections are a gift and a curse. They allow DJs to carry and manage massive amounts of music that would be physically impossible with vinyl. Very rarely will a modern DJ have the thought \u201cdarn I left that track at home.\u201d The curse is that this massive collection can quickly get out of hand. The core of any great DJ is their music collection and if their collection is a mess or filled with subpar tracks, it can make it harder to find the next perfect track to play. Today Ryan Dejaegher will share 5 tools to take control. <\/p>\n

1. You <\/p>\n

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You, yes you, are the best tool for managing your collection. The first step is to be more selective about what goes into your collection. The best DJ is not the DJ with the largest collection, it\u2019s the DJ that knows their library inside and out and is ruthless about what gets added. There are a number of ways to be more selective. This can be a difficult thing to understand for new DJs that may have a smaller collection. They may feel like they don\u2019t have enough tracks so they need to go on a big downloading binge. While it may seem harmless in the beginning, this behaviour can quickly lead to a massive collection of mediocre tracks that clutter your library and that never get played.<\/p>\n

Next time you\u2019re looking for new music, ask yourself:<\/p>\n

If this wasn\u2019t a free download, would I buy it?
\nWhere\/when would I play this? Get specific.
\nHow many times have I listened to it? Do I repeatedly keep streaming it from Spotify or Soundcloud?
\n\u201d Follow the same rules you use in your clothing closet. When new tracks come in, try to get rid of an equal number of the old ones so the overall size stays manageable. Every 3 to 6 months evaluate songs that have not been played in that time \u2013 they are probably the ones to get cut. \u2013 Ean Golden\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Mixed In Key (Mac\/PC)<\/p>\n

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Most DJs will be familiar with Mixed In Key (check out MIK 7 with automatic cue points). For those that aren\u2019t, it\u2019s an app that will analyze and detect the key of tracks to make it easier to find tracks that are harmonically compatible. With version 6, MIK introduced a new feature, \u201cenergy detection.\u201d With energy detection, MIK will rate a tracks energy from 1-10 (least to most energy).<\/p>\n

The energy detection takes into account the BPM of the track, so that the energy is relative between slow and fast tracks. While this data is useful for helping DJs understand what songs will work together, it can also be used for easy organization when combined with iTunes smart playlists, which we\u2019ll get into later.<\/p>\n

3. Metabliss (Mac Only\/PC coming soon)<\/p>\n

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MetaBliss is another app from the Mixed In Key team that\u2019s designed to help DJs take control over their metadata. DJs can drag and drop a collection of tracks and quickly edit multiple ID3 fields\/tags and save these changes to the track. Tired of having multiple entries for the same artist: Jayz, jay-z, JayZ, Jay Z? Now you can change all of them to be \u201cJay Z\u201d. This is also great for cleaning up multiple genre tags (hip hop, hip-hop, hiphop).<\/p>\n

MetaBliss also lets you search and delete text from specific columns. So if lots of titles have the artist name beside the track, you can easily remove the artist name from the title field. A highly recommended app for the obsessive compulsive DJ that wants a clean and consistent library.<\/p>\n

4. TuneUp (Mac\/PC)<\/p>\n

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TuneUp is designed to \u201cfix your entire music library automagically\u201d. TuneUp runs alongside iTunes or Windows Media Player. It will fix mislabeled song info, detect and delete duplicate tracks, and it will analyze your music collection and determine how clean it is. The real magic of the software is that it analyzes the audio of the track to find the song information, rather then relying on the existing metadata of the track. That means that even if a track has no metadata (unknown artist, untitled track), TuneUp can still identify and label the song.<\/p>\n

This makes it a great program for DJs that have old vinyl rips that they want to have properly labelled in their software or if they used another program that messed up their ID3 tags. TuneUp gives users the ability to determine what tags are updated. So if you\u2019re happy with the artist and titles but you want the genre tagged or album art, you can choose to only have those tags written to the track. TuneUp uses Gracenote for its music data, the same database that iTunes uses to add track information to people\u2019s ripped CD collections so it\u2019s pretty good at detecting tracks. Where it\u2019s not as strong is with new releases, acapellas, and remixes. In this case it\u2019d be best to use MetaBliss to manually tag the tracks.<\/p>\n

5. Smart Playlist (iTunes)<\/p>\n

Smart Playlists are super helpful for cleaning up your library. The best part is that it\u2019s all automated, once you\u2019ve made a smart playlist there isn\u2019t much that needs to be managed. The reason it\u2019s last in the list is that it\u2019s helpful to have extra data from apps like Mixed In Key to work with. To create a new smart playlist click \u201cFile\u201d \u2014> \u201cNew\u201d \u2014> Smart Playlist. A window will appear to create a set of rules for the smart playlist to follow. You can create a rule with nearly all the iTunes columns (Artist, title, album, genre etc.) and there are several variables to assign: \u201ccontains\/does not contain\u201d, \u201cis\/is not\u201d, or \u201cbegins\/ends with\u201d. There are so many ways that Smart Playlists can be used to help organize tracks but for now we\u2019ll focus on a few key playlists.<\/p>\n

\u201cFind Tracks That Are in Key and in a similar BPM range\u201d<\/p>\n

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Smart Playlists can help us narrow down the amount of song choices. Of course this doesn\u2019t mean you should only rely on the songs in the smart playlist, but it can be a helpful tool to start building a manual playlist from rather then trying to create a playlist from the entire collection. With your tracks analyzed by MIK you can now have 3 useful pieces of data to help pair your tracks: key, energy, and BPM.<\/p>\n

With this criteria, my smart playlist will gather songs that have key 1A (A-Flat Minor), are between 120 – 130BPM, and only with at least a \u201c3\u201d for energy (This helps filter out any super chill tracks, interviews or podcasts from the playlist.) Now I have a playlist of songs that is automatically updated whenever a song in my library fits this criteria. This can be taken a step further by adding the genre to narrow things further. Again with a massive collection this can be a great way to find mixes and track combinations that you may not have found otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cFind Tracks From Record Pool”.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re subscribed to a record pool (check out our record pool comparison), then you likely have multiple versions of the same track such as clean edits, dirty edits, intro edits, or transition tools. These can quickly get lost in a large collection so it\u2019s beneficial to create a smart playlist where you can easily find them. Depending on the record pool you\u2019re subscribed to and the way they label their tracks you may need adjust your playlist accordingly but the playlist above will give you an idea to help you get started. Now I have a playlist that is automatically updated with new tracks that I download from my record pools.<\/p>\n

Take Control Of Your Collection<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, these tools can help DJs clean up and organize their collection but ultimately they\u2019re not a substitute for a DJs taste. All this organization really means nothing if it\u2019s organizing a bunch of mediocre tracks. Remember be very critical and selective of what gets added to your collection. If you find yourself constantly adding music that you don\u2019t like to your collection, perhaps for requests or to fill requirements for gigs, then it may be time to reevaluate the kinds of gigs you\u2019re taking.<\/p>\n

Hopefully this was helpful for you guys since a majority of is use mp3s while we DJ. Stay tuned for more do post on DJ tips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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