SwingDJs

Some DJs on this board have talked about 'tagging' songs as a way of organising them, for example 'Charleston' or 'Blues', which would then allow to create lists of songs for Charleston or Blues. I am starting to do this more and more. The problem, though, is that it takes for ever. Are there any quick, efficient ways to tag songs? (I use iTunes, and tag songs in the 'Comment' field). A related question is: does anyone know if you can use colour in iTunes? As far as I can see, it's currently black and white only. Marking by colour might be very useful when DJing as a quick visual aid.

i don't use this kind of tagging, but you do know that you can select a whole bunch of tracks in itunes and edit their comment fields all in one go, right?

this doesn't work if some already contain something in their comment fields that you want to keep (everything will be erased and replaced by the new text).

lipi wrote:this doesn't work if some already contain something in their comment fields that you want to keep (everything will be erased and replaced by the new text).

Some programs are flexible/smart enough that you can do funky things when working the tags. For example when using jriver, I have a bunch of songs I want to tag as "charleston", but some of the comment fields already have additional notes. I can go to my comment field and enter

=[comment] charleston[bpm]

which will simply append " charlestonXYZ" where XYZ is the bpms I might have (from the bpm field) to the end of any existing comments

Surreal wrote:

lipi wrote:this doesn't work if some already contain something in their comment fields that you want to keep (everything will be erased and replaced by the new text).

Some programs are flexible/smart enough that you can do funky things when working the tags. For example when using jriver, I have a bunch of songs I want to tag as "charleston", but some of the comment fields already have additional notes. I can go to my comment field and enter

=[comment] charleston[bpm]

which will simply append " charlestonXYZ" where XYZ is the bpms I might have (from the bpm field) to the end of any existing comments

That's the sort of quick way I was thinking of - I wonder if there is any way of doing this with iTunes on a Mac?

No idea. I ditched itunes a long time ago.

You can probably find a good free standalone id3tag program though. Whether or not it will behave with itunes is another story.

The most advanced id3 tag manipulation program I've found so far is Mp3/Tag Studio. Unlimited trial version: http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/

You can mass-append, overwrite, or prepend the comment tag (among thousands of other things). Highly programmable. Some features are so advanced that you almost need a degree in computer science to use them.

anton wrote:The most advanced id3 tag manipulation program I've found so far is Mp3/Tag Studio. Unlimited trial version: http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/

+1

I love mpi3TagStudio for batch edits.

I use eMusicTagEditor for one off tag editing. Both are worth the $$$. If I had to choose, I'd go with eMusic Tag Editor.

--Stan Graves

SoundInMotionDJ wrote:

anton wrote:The most advanced id3 tag manipulation program I've found so far is Mp3/Tag Studio. Unlimited trial version: http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/

+1

I love mpi3TagStudio for batch edits.

I use eMusicTagEditor for one off tag editing. Both are worth the $$$. If I had to choose, I'd go with eMusic Tag Editor.

--Stan Graves

What about Mac users like me?

How does using standalone tagging software interact with library managers like itunes/jriver/etc? Do the managers automatically update their library (since they typically build their own library files instead of loading all the id3 tags each time) or do you have to do that manually?

Surreal wrote:How does using standalone tagging software interact with library managers like itunes/jriver/etc? Do the managers automatically update their library (since they typically build their own library files instead of loading all the id3 tags each time) or do you have to do that manually?

I typically do not run iTunes while I am editing tags. On the next launch of iTunes, any tag changes I have made are visible.

I do not know if the tag changes are updated while iTunes is running.

--Stan Graves

I am a big advocate of using tags. I have a whole system that uses the comments field and I just save queries in my music player to pull up whatever I want. Lately, I have been using a tool called Tag Scanner,

http://www.download.com/TagScanner/3000 ... 56506.html

My favorite of the ones I have played with over the past few years.

Nathan

For the money, Tagscanner is very good.
I've been using Tag and Rename
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

because the linux based player that I've been using, the iDj2
http://www.numark.com/idj2

On the built in screen it will show a folder hierarchy in each hdd then the file name.
I can group each dance style by folder and then put a sub folder with genre, then the picking of the acutal song is by the file name.
Pulling up a comment field (or bpm field) is not an option
edit: After thinking about it, it is a search option but a global option to each hdd (across all folders in hdd). Search options are useful and plentiful but lacking in information displayed.

So I'm in the process of retagging 2Tb of files with
bpm - artist - song - (year or genre as needed)

I could not get a bpm field in tagscanner

I've been using the free mixmiester bpm program that automatically scans the bpm and inserts it into the bpm field, so this is a small problem.
http://www.mixmeister.com/bpmanalyzer/bpmanalyzer.asp
(this auto program is about 90% accurate, you'll have to watch the results.)

Tag and rename will also let you swap fields in a batch, which might be helpful to someone as well.

Greg

ps. The character limit on the small screen of the iDj2 is a challenge as well. BUT this unit has never crashed or "burped" in the two years I've been using it. It is a rock solid small venue powerhouse that fits in a 17" laptop case. Also it has XLR outputs add powered speakers on a handcart and you're good to go mobile.

Nate Dogg wrote:I am a big advocate of using tags. I have a whole system that uses the comments field and I just save queries in my music player to pull up whatever I want. Lately, I have been using a tool called Tag Scanner,

http://www.download.com/TagScanner/3000 ... 56506.html

My favorite of the ones I have played with over the past few years.

Nathan

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Those tag editors look good. Unfortunately, they all seem to be for Windows, and I'm using iTunes on a Mac. Is there any software for me?

I've been playing with MusicBrainz Picard and a script that works with it to grab the tags off of LastFM and cram them into the genre tag of the song. It's not perfect and relies on (a) Picard being able to identify the song and (b) the tags on LastFM being useful and/or consistent. It's not a complete solution but it seems like it's made a good starting point.

I use "exfalso" a lot. But it does lack some features I'd need, such as a fast tabular edit when fixing whole albums; still it pretty much satisfies my tagging needs (so I'm not planning writing my own tagging application. ).
I does support multiple Comment and Genre tags (the latest ID3 standard allows this, and Vorbis even encourages this, but e.g. iTunes will just join the tags into one big tag in display, unfortunately. But I don't use iTunes), which is what I use for tagging my music.

http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/

It should be possible to use this on a Mac, but don't ask me on how to install it - I dislike the Mac hype and don't use them.