There is a crucial step between these two activities that gets left behind in the process of being an awesome DJ as soon as possible. Of course we all want to make everyone turn up to the party, shaking their attachments and confirming straight away that you’re grade A DJ material. Before that, however, …
Sorting and tagging your music is the best tactic to an original set and an organic growth of your DJ image as a whole.
Most DJ managers would say: “Nonsense! All my DJ needs are some bangers, a cool cut and shave and a strong image which I work my ass for!”. If that’s your manager, you might wanna consider another manager or going solo. In some cases, managers indeed have the ability to provide a much wider frame of view for you, the artist, knowing how to channel resources and the enthusiasm of the fans into an exceptional display of professional entertainment.
No matter how successful you are, preparing and practicing for any show is always a wise step.
Sorting your music comes down to what is most visible for you when faced with finding a certain song, genre or sound for a particular occasion. This is why some of you might prefer to arrange your tracks with colors, assigning red for true ass-shakers, yellow for mellower stuff and green for happy songs. Whatever your color map, tagging your music with colors is a sure way of spotting what you need FAST.
Coloring your tracks isn’t enough to tell them apart? Try adding a “*” to the title of songs that are massive hits; use symbols to create your own guidelines.
DJs can also sort their music through the classic genre, year, artist, etc., but I find it more fast-paced to simply create playlists for certain genres/artists (e.g. create the “Techno”/”Mr. Oizo” playlist, then color code and further sort the songs). After carefully structuring your playlists, only then will you be able to focus your music into sub-genres and more refined parameters that make managing the contents of your mix easier.
The software and hardware that you use might have restrictions or requirements on how your music should be organized, so before committing to a “One list to play them all“, ask yourself how you will use your music library in all the different scenarios you know you’ll find yourself in.
In future.dj pro there are a dozen ways of sorting your music, coupled with an advanced search system that lets you isolate songs by BPM and the key in which a track is sung. Open the preferences window for more features that let you control your music precisely the way you want to.
Search the middle of words by selecting the option from General Preferences; this way you’ll be able to search the “on” in “song“.
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