Library writers: how do you keep it organized?

mazz · Post by **mazz** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:51 am

Just another quick glance at iTunes makes me think it's still a pretty powerful tool to do what we are trying to do.Here's some ideas all accessed by doing a "show info" on a particular song: iTunes has a lyrics page which looks like it holds a lot of info. Unfortunately it isn't searchable and it appears the comments aren't either. On the upside, the lyrics could be saved there and iTunes stamps a date created and a date modified on each song so that might be useful as well.The Artwork page will allow importing of pdf and jpeg files so if one has some documentation (contract, etc.) and scans it, it can be attached as artwork the same as an album cover.The grouping function could be used for things like keys and then you could, for example, sort by all songs in the key of A.There's a BPM field already in iTunes.There's an artist and a composer field. The composer field could be used for co-writers.The smart playlists are pretty darn cool. You could, for instance set up a playlist that had all mp3s from 2007 co-written with matto or stick or all instrumental pieces in Bb with the tempo of 100BPM. It's pretty flexible.If you look in the View menu and look at View Options you can see all the data that can be modified and shown or hidden in the library view. It's pretty flexible and totally oriented toward music.I'm thinking that iTunes might be the way to go. It's been there all along!!!!Cheers,Mazz

avillaronga · Post by **avillaronga** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:17 am

I use iTunes and create smart playlists to keep myself organized. I use the rating field to classify my files between in-progress, submitted, and licensed (in-progress = 1 star, licensed = 5 stars, etc). I use the genre (created my own classifications), album, grouping, and comments fields to add meaningful info for sorting/finding easily. I keep contracts/business stuff separately but I always make a folder with the name of the file that the business stuff corresponds to in iTunes; I also use date stamps on my file names to keep different mixes of the same song organized. So if I have MySong_December30_2007.mp3 in iTunes, under my "Contracts" folder I create a folder named "MySong_December30_2007.mp3" and put all contracts, etc under there. I have contracts that involve several tracks at once so I will create a folder with the date for those contracts and add an alias for the mp3 (or WAV) under that folder to point to each track involved in that contract. Maybe my catalogue is not large enough yet for this to still work but it has worked fine for me. I work with databases in my day job so you would think it would be easy for me to create one for this purpose but I simply think a DB is overkill since there are other tools that already do a lot of the work for you. But if anyone has good ideas for creating something I'd be willing to volunteer my DB skills and create something using Open Source software. Maybe it could even work by automating iTunes with AppleScript... Antonio

edteja · Post by **edteja** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 11:59 am

One danger with the smart playlists is if you change the field that puts it there. For instance, I was using the album name as a searchable field and to put the songs under different library submission names. But then I was putting together a CD and wrote in the working title of the CD and it yanked the tunes out of the other playlists. To keep from screwing myself up, when I submit a CD to a library, I use the old fashioned playlist, and just stick the tunes in it until I hear back on anything that might be accepted. I am not totally happy with the approach but it is better than anything else I have tried. I do keep a master catalog in Excel with the title, co-authors, musician names, date of completion, copyright and ASCAP numbers and so on. I even remember to update it every so often! (Not often enough.)

stick · Post by **stick** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 4:20 pm

Great stuff Antonio... I've never messed with those smart playlists. Still, something about trying to organize all that in iTunes seems sketchy, and it also forces me to keep the library all on the main hard drive. For a few hundred WAVs that gets to be a big library. I'm thinking about a way to store the library on my web space as mp3 and WAV so that when I get a bite, I can just send the library a link to either or both directly. And I think with a program like Filemaker I should be able to directly link all that together... sounds like they've added a lot of web tie-ins since I last used it years ago. Antonio, do you have experience with Filemaker recently? I think an OpenSource database is probably a little over my head for this sorta thing... I'm downloading the demo now to see if I can put together what I'm thinking without getting too nuts.

mazz · Post by **mazz** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 4:39 pm

Stick,I keep my itunes library on a different drive. It's a bit of a pain at first to move it but it's totally do-able. Apple even has some articles on how to do it.I think mp3s on a website is a good idea and then if they want the wav you can ftp it to them or something like that.Just some more ideas. Good luck with FileMaker!Mazz

stick · Post by **stick** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 4:59 pm

Oh, that's good to know Mazz... I should look at that. I'm constantly copying things from my project folder into iTunes, which then copys a version to the iTunes library, and then if I need an mp3 or whatever there, another file to the drive. It gets out of hand pretty fast with a mix or two a day going in there.

matto · Post by **matto** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 6:46 pm

In iTunes, can you assign custom keywords to your tracks which you can then search for? That would really be an essential feature for me. Otherwise I'm faster going by memory...as long as my memory holds and my catalog doesn't get too out of hand...

stick · Post by **stick** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 6:52 pm

Sheesh, I write a tune one day, and can't remember what it sounds like the next! That's amazing you can remember a library of hundreds of tunes. It looks like Filemaker is going to do what I want. And it's pretty easy so far... Maybe I'll spread it around for a small Paypal donation...

mazz · Post by **mazz** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 7:27 pm

Quote:In iTunes, can you assign custom keywords to your tracks which you can then search for? That would really be an essential feature for me. Otherwise I'm faster going by memory...as long as my memory holds and my catalog doesn't get too out of hand... I've discovered there's certain fields such as "album artist" that are included in a search and so one could type keywords in to one of those fields. You can choose to display that field or not in your window and, in fact, different playlists can have different "views". You could have two playlists with the exact same songs in them but set them to display completely different information.If you haven't tried iTunes, it's free from Apple and it's cross platform. It's worth checking out.Mazz

milfus · Post by **milfus** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 4:44 am

well just my .02, I am a programmer, vc++ and a few other languages, but you could try a naming convention like you do with resource files, like bpm-genre-name-date.mp3 or whatever order you would like, then you just look for the right bpm, then the right genre, then the name reminds you of the peice. I dunno if that will help or not, but thats how I have mine sorted.

Library writers: how do you keep it organized?

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