DJing Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

[DjNutcase]

Hi all

I started DJing on Technics turntables but have recently progressed to CDJ's so I can get my music from Beatport instead of importing it to South Africa (expensive and bloody SLOW).

Now when I was on vinyl I kinda remembered the look of the record cover and it's position in my box. I always knew where all my tunes were. Now... with CD's... I'm totally confused. If I want to play a Habersham record, how am i supposed to remember it's on CD 23, track 5?

How do all you CD djs organise your songs so you don't have this problem? Do you order it by artist? genre? bpm?

Any advise would be most helpful

[ShawnD64]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

what i do (or did once) when i played out. It may be a major waste but i put each song on a indvidual cd and maybe add the remix there as well. from there i rank my songs from 1-5 depending on intensity. 1 being slower/early night and 5 being peak/end of night. and arrange my cd book as so. and on each cd i will put the number of the track and time markers where the intro ends and where i should start to mix it out. which can change based on pitch change, but it will be a good ballpark. now thats just me. i see people with loads of tracks on each cd. but i wouldnt want to be in the position where i want to mix to tracks on the same cd together.

[jeffrey collins]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

I usually put 8-9 songs on a cd, print out the name and track number of each song, then go through and put the BPM under each name for each song. Works pretty well for slanging a lot of tracks to a gig. And it doesn't hurt as bad as trying to carry around vinyl.

[nchs09]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

i have a little system..


i color code my cd's

black = tribal and progressive
blue = housy stuff and electroish stuff...


the frong of my cd book is with all my tribal and prog and the back is all housy and electroish.,.. so tis easy for me to find tracks etc..

hope that helps

[jeffrey collins]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

it also helps to just write what type of dance music is on each cd. But that doesn't work for me as I put them on cd as I get them, which makes for a lot of rambling around in my cd book.

[mnbvcxz]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

I don't think its a silly question at all... I'm still trying to figure out how to organise my cds. I think labelling with bpms is a good idea, and perhaps colour coding based on intensity as well. Time markers is an idea I didn't think of, but... I'm beginning to think it'd be easier if cd-r's had more writing space

[ShawnD64]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

I don't think its a silly question at all... I'm still trying to figure out how to organise my cds. I think labelling with bpms is a good idea, and perhaps colour coding based on intensity as well. Time markers is an idea I didn't think of, but... I'm beginning to think it'd be easier if cd-r's had more writing space

yes its not silly.
and time markers are essential imo. on the records you can see where you want to mix out (from the grooves)... with cds you are blind. you can even print out a piece of paper and slide it in where the cd was with all the tracks info... so you can go and look at it while the cd is playing.

[jeffrey collins]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

when it comes to time markers...most producers put that in for you, you can hear the breaks where the melody is dropping out and after that you usually have 45 to 60 seconds before the finish of the track...same for the beginning, they are usually 1minute into the song before the melody comes in...now some prog doesn't really come in until 1:30. who knows with minimal, you can mix 4 minutes of one and 4 of the other.

Has this djnutcase even come back to the site since his post?

[DjNutcase]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

Has this djnutcase even come back to the site since his post?

Sorry for that impression - thanks all for all the suggestions. I've tried writing down all the track names on the actual CDs but find it's hard going through like 60 cds trying to find a certain track, especially with my handwriting. Not really interesting in writing down all the BPMs as I mix all different genres and play according how the tracks SOUND ( "Where is that dark psycho drum track I played the other day???!" ) and am quite familiar with all the tunes so don't need to remember when to mix out (!!)

Seems as though there's no real solution... will probably have to keep my paper CD tracklisting and just colour code my tracks by genre (dark tribal house/deep prog/hard prog/party prog etc), which will hopefully make it easier to find individual tracks - thanks for the tip!

I suppose another solution would be to just cut a few CDs per party and then be sort of limited to those tracks without the need for scrounging around through the whole collection

[FM]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

Well you're on the right idea at least...if you're handwriting does suck, then typing it out works nicely, even if it's only a track or 2 per CD.

My little system...I created a Word document that's a table split up into 4 sleeves that would fit in a CD case when cut out...each sleeve is columned into the track, key & BPM. Originally I wrote the sleeves out, but now spend the extra time typing which saves the time when needed out in the booth...much more neater and organized. I also put around 9, 10 similar-styled tracks on a CD (don't usually try to max. out the space, as the first tracks to eventually skip would be the last ones after wear & tear).

Bottom line: you'll come up with something eventually that works for you...it may not be perfect in the beginning, but you'll find what works.

As for time markers, think in :15 increments for every 32 beats (it'll be slightly more or less depending on the actual BPM, but :15 is a good clean number to remember, as if you're cueing up a track in a ways, you'll find the downbeat quicker). Melodies drop in anywhere from :45 in to 1:30; the longer the track length, the longer the intro (not in every single case, but works a good majority of the time)...just a guidance to utilize, especially if you have to throw one on quickly when you're running out of time.

[Jayson]

Re: Silly Question -From Vinyl to CD - How to remember the tunes?

I'm in the same boat, just recently recorded a load of records onto my computer and now am buring them to cd.

I put them in an excel spredsheet on my laptop and always take it with me now.

http://download.yousendit.com/667904EA34B21AEE

Here, you can download it and check it out if you like.

Catalog is how I organize them. A-01 is cd A, track 01 and so on. I burn 8-11 tracks per cd and burn two cds. So with two cds I have 10 tracks.

Kinda quirky but it works well for me.