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Tag your Songs

By Ean Golden on October 31, 2008

Today is Friday, October 31st so that means its time for tricks and treats in digital dj domain. Here is the letter of the week:


I just read your tagging tutorial and you mentioned you will/did? do a part 2. I looked around (maybe not thoroughly enough) but I could not find it. I am looking forward to purchasing a vci-300 in the future and started tagging my files and would like to see how you and others do it.

Any help on this would be great.

Stephan

Thanks for the letter Stephen, and for pointing out we never did a tagging part 2. For those that didn’t see the first one I recommend you start by reading that article here. There are so many ways to go about organizing your music and I am sure our readers will have many more great suggestions than I do. Here is one trick I have employed that works really well and will be even more relevent in Traktor Pro.

Color your Tracks

Since most of our tracks don’t have any album artwork why not make your own and have them actually mean something to you? Here is a little system that I implemented myself:

  • RED: Must play/ High Energy
  • Blue: Chill/Early
  • Orange: Medium Energy
  • MegaPhone Icon: Vocal Sample

This is just the tip of the iceberg but the point is clear. Create visual associations of your music so you can quickly and effectively select songs by color. Perhaps you might want to use colors that fit the Camelot scale?

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Comments (17)
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  • Victor

    I changed all the artwork on my tracks in iTunes except it doesn’t get recognized in traktor pro. I went into Traktor Pro and deleted all the coverart backups. When I re-import the files, they still have the old cover art.

  • Fernando

    [quote post=”882″]Ean Golden
    Nov 7th, 2008 at 7:37 pm Quote

    Could someone possibly go into a little more detail on how to take any colors or artwork and attach/tag it to a track? Also what dimensions should it be? Thanks!!!

    use photo shop- create a square of any size or color. Drag it into the file in itunes.

    its very easy. you can do them in bulk as well.[/quote]

    Amazing when it stares you in the face !!!

    How do you import jingles and fx in Traktor like VDJ ? – Anyone ?

  • Frank

    Say ig i wanted to mix diffrent genres of music together just my browsing the BPM's row,I was wondering if theres was an easier way to tag your BPM's in your library! Can traktor pro scan all your files and tag the BPM's for you? any one any help please?

  • stet

    I would definitely suggest rapid evolution, it is free and better than mixed in key imo. You can tag your tracks with as much or little detail as you want. I have personally have tags for energy, genre, mood and style, and with the enhanced search it really helps to narrow down your search results. You can also drag and drop tracks from RE into traktor ;). Oh yeah, it also supports album cover artwork

  • Anonymous

    [quote comment=""][quote comment="14975"]This is a great aticle, thanks Ean! For those of us less musically inclined, is there a plug_in or standalone software that analyzes songs to find out what key they are in?

    Thanks.[/quote]

    We wrote a great article on mixed in key many months ago
    http://www.djtechtools.com/2007/12/16/are-you-mix…

    check out Rapid Evolution @ http://www.mixshare.com/

    It allows you to associate trax that mix well together, through tempo, your ratings, genre etc. and it will highlight them in your playlist so you can easily find it..also detects and highlights tracks that are in a similar key =]

  • Ean Golden

    [quote comment="14975"]This is a great aticle, thanks Ean! For those of us less musically inclined, is there a plug_in or standalone software that analyzes songs to find out what key they are in?

    Thanks.[/quote]

    We wrote a great article on mixed in key many months ago
    http://www.djtechtools.com/2007/12/16/are-you-mix…

  • skwrl

    [quote comment=""]This is a great aticle, thanks Ean! For those of us less musically inclined, is there a plug_in or standalone software that analyzes songs to find out what key they are in?

    Thanks.[/quote]

    [quote comment="14975"]This is a great aticle, thanks Ean! For those of us less musically inclined, is there a plug_in or standalone software that analyzes songs to find out what key they are in?

    Thanks.[/quote]

    Hey, I haven't used it personally, though an anonymous response above mentioned Mixed In Key. This program is on my to-buy list, it analyzes your songs and assigns a key to it. There is a companion program that analyzes the songs and does minor pitch corrections as well as some quick mastering. I'd say take a look into both of them 🙂

  • Chris

    This is a great aticle, thanks Ean! For those of us less musically inclined, is there a plug_in or standalone software that analyzes songs to find out what key they are in?

    Thanks.

  • Tkone

    Nice, tnx.

  • Ean Golden

    [quote comment=””]Could someone possibly go into a little more detail on how to take any colors or artwork and attach/tag it to a track? Also what dimensions should it be? Thanks!!![/quote]
    use photo shop- create a square of any size or color. Drag it into the file in itunes.

    its very easy. you can do them in bulk as well.

  • Rick

    Could someone possibly go into a little more detail on how to take any colors or artwork and attach/tag it to a track? Also what dimensions should it be? Thanks!!!

  • Anonymous

    Besides the playlists.. I use the "keys" of the Camelot scale. (Mixed In Key) it works wonderful! All my tracks are named "Name – key – bpm.mp3"

    This wa I can search in/outside Traktor and "Know it all" regarding the track. 😉

  • B33SON (mycole)

    I just create a bunch of playlists. I have genre playlists, slammer playlists, controllerist playlists, and then all my set playlists. The good thing is that it's flexible, the bad thing is that you have to drop the same track in multiple places to make it work.

  • Walidism

    i like the idea of cover art… im used to using the camelot notation to figure out what songs would go well together, but have not really found a way to seperate songs that have different moods other than the star rating (1star = chill up to 5 star = super energy), of course, mistakingly, i will assume that one star means horrible, never play, so i will have to give this a try.

    thanks EAN!

  • JesC

    Thanks for the info Ean, will follow the color wheel now that pro have cover art.

    -Happy Halloween!