maariku

I know it might seem like such a horrible thing to say but I feel I've reached the point where I have more ME music than I can handle. I feel like I am losing control - I just don't kknow any more which piece of music is on which cd or which ones have been copied to the laptop... And, don't even mention the mess that is going on in the laptop

So, I need to hear your tips. How do you organize your music? How do you make sure that you rememer the location of all the songs you like? And how do you make sure that you go through your collection every now and then, just in case you might realise you actually like another song...

Ah, I know it is such a typical Northerner thing, but I need a system! Help!

nicknack

Most of my music is burnt onto disc, so I keep it all in cd wallets. I have different wallets for different countries, and the cd's inside them are grouped together in order of style (for example my Israel folder is seperated into Mizrahi music, Ladino music, Temani/Yemeni, Amharic..etc)

Shakeelah

The answer to your filing system quest is of course itunes or something similar!

I suggest you put all of your music on your computer, then you can sort your music into playlists, ie favourites, new albums etc. Where it really comes into its own is for individual tracks, collating all of your classical egyptian together, egyptian pop, turkish, tribal, techno etc. and if teaching, complete class playlists, that you can change from week to week

Yes it does take a little bit of time, (I have just spent a lot of the past month doing just this, as well as updating the track names etc, whilst changing from a PC without itunes to a mac! ) but it has been more than worth it. I am fortunate to also now have an ipod, so I now have a backup of this music and can take it all with me! Yeah!

Happy listening and sorting!

Aniseteph

Most of mine is sorted on PC in Windows Media Player - sounds like it's just the same sort of thing as itunes. If you let it make up playlists of things you haven't played much you can rediscover those "lost" tracks!

And then you can explain to other half why you've filled his PC up with belly dance music.....

samsied

I second Shakeelah's suggestion! It is a big time commitment to import all your cd's into I-Tunes (or similar)--it took me a few weeks to import my existing collection of dance music. I worked on it for most of the day for those weeks--at the time I just moved to a new place and had not yet found a job. It was worth it!

I really make use of the comments, genre, ratings, and lyrics fields within ITunes to include everything I know about the songs. (If I have a lyrics translation or summary it goes into the lyrics field, I list the dominant instruments in the comments, the country the musicians are from, etc.)

Once you have it, it is really handy. For example if you are looking for a drum solo that fits within your routine, you can search by drum solo and sort by the length of the track. (or by any keywords you have in the comments).

I found this categorizing has really changed how I appreciate and understand my dance music. For me this is one of the best things I have done for my dancing!

gwinity

We have rather a lot of CDs between us, so are slowly converting them all across to MP3 format using iTunes. It's a BIG job, so if you decide to do it, be prepared for many, many hours of "insert CD, wait for iTunes to get album info, rip, repeat".

After that, the trick to keeping the tracks in order is to retain all the album infom and keep them sorted in their albums. You can use your preferred player to create playlists like Aniseteph has done, put them onto a personal music player, or burn them onto an MP3 compilation CD/DVD and the song, artist and album info should all be there, so that next time you're listening to your favourite tracks, wherever you are, you can see pretty much at a glance who it's by, and track down the CD.

maariku

Thanks for all the replies! I have both, Media Player and iTunes on my laptop, but so far I've only used the first one. Question of habit, I guess. But seems that I should figure out iTunes instead as there are more ways of adding comments.

Samsied - I love the idea of adding the summary of lyrics to a track description! This makes finding the way around easier as the tracks have a more "personal" face

I have also been considering buying extra memory for the music... This way, it would all be together in one place and not totally killing the operational memory of my laptop. And, maybe this would also reduce the risk of complete disaster when something in the comp. breaks down and takes all the files with it (remember Maria's story?).

__________________
"[A good bellydancer] must express life, death, happiness, sorrow, love and anger, but above all she must have dignity." -Tahia Carioca,

sstacy123

ah yes I had my laptop crash not too long ago also...I had just started downloading music from e-music and made no backups...and I only have dialup! Luckily I didn't have THAT many to redownload...it could have been a lot worse...though I did lose some music from other vendors I'd downloaded from and never made a backup...

Aziyade

I have something like 300 Middle Eastern CDs, and I WISH I could put them all into Itunes or on my pod.

What I'm currently doing (I'm almost done but I keep buying new ones!) is listening to the CD at work, and taking notes on each track. I put the short notes inside each jewel case, and then file the CDs by subject at home. (One shelf for classical Raqs Sharqi style Egyptian, one shelf for pop, one shelf for old-style sound, Old-school Turkish, Ghawazee, Turkish Romani, mostly drum solos, etc.)

My notes have little stars by the tracks that I think I might want to dance to, or use in class. When I need a new piece, I go to the appropriate shelf and thumb through the notes until I find one I like. I also keep index cards with specific track listings for "Special Topics" classes (like Tantalizing Taqsims, Dynamic Drum Solos, Focus on Oud, etc.) For those classes, I burn "Special Topics" Cds, with nothing but (for example) Taqsims or Drum Solos or whatever. It means carting less stuff to class.

Looking back over this post makes me realize I wish I had done all this digitally. Sigh.

nicknack

I can't wait until I get a lap top of my very own. I have to share a pc, with someone who has a penchant for reformtting (hence my need to have everything on disc to prevent its deletion).