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James_mac
02-18-2012, 07:32 PM
So recently iv bought myself a pair of CDJ850's and a DJM700 after a few years of using a controller so now Iv got to crack on with burning some CD's but I have loads of music, all different genres, styles and bpm ranges ( i know the 850's r usb compatible but i like using cds and having that physical back up) and I can't decide what to put on each disk & how many tracks!*
How do you experienced DJ's *organize your CD's?*

TheFrenchWay
02-18-2012, 07:51 PM
I do not mix on CDJs, I'm on turntables but lots of DJs around do. What I've seen the most efficient is:

1 track per CD with track name, artist, BPM info and also structure of the song info all labeled on there.

Different CD cases for different genres.

You'll end up with a ton of CDs but if everything is well organized it should be very easy to find the next track from there.

Edit: I think the best type of CD are the ones you can print on. Easy to write on with a marker and looks neat aswell and you can go as far as burning CDs in double as a ''just in case''.

Hope this helped a little.

mantis
02-18-2012, 08:44 PM
one track per cd is crazy cause you will end up with too many cds. Load 10 - 13 tracks on and label them well. I will post some pics of my cd collection later.

John Veselsky
02-18-2012, 09:06 PM
I do one song per CD and it works out fine. It also depends on what CDJ's your using as well.

fueledbymusic
02-18-2012, 09:13 PM
I fill the cd with music of one genre. I make 2 copies of each cd as to be sure the next song I want to play is not on the same cd. Well that's how I do it. Everybody have their own way

NickJames
02-18-2012, 09:52 PM
I fill the cd with music of one genre. I make 2 copies of each cd as to be sure the next song I want to play is not on the same cd. Well that's how I do it. Everybody have their own way

Same thing... ~10 tracks to a CD, two copies of each.

djshire
02-19-2012, 12:03 AM
I seem to be the odd one....I put a release on a CD (or on two CDs if its more than 3 tracks), or make "compilation" CDs of about 5 or 6 songs from a sub-genre. My cd wallet is organized by genre, then sub-genre.

Grifff
02-19-2012, 06:20 AM
The best method, IMO, is sticking around 8 or 9 tracks (or however many tracks you can fit really) of the same genre and the same intensity onto a CD and then organising the CDs in your wallet by order of intensity, i.e. deep house at the start. Duplicate the CDs if you want/ have enough spare CDs

Buszaj
02-19-2012, 03:21 PM
The system I've been using has been perfect for me. Bear with me on the steps...

1. Organize music in playlists in iTunes. Playlists are different genres. In each playlist, alphabetically organized by artist name.

2. Burn all playlists to CDs. When burning a playlist in iTunes, it gives you the option to split it across as many CDs needed to fit it. So you'll have let's sy Trance "A-D", "D-M", "M-Z". On each CD there will be probably between 12 and 18 tracks. 2 copies of each disc. Burn at highest quality with track titles.

3. Toss all CDs into big-ass CD wallet.

4. With new music coming out all the time (and me often DJ'ing top40), all my new music will go into playlists labelled "Recent 1", "Recent 2", etc. I'm up to Recent 27 now :teef:

5. Now, to know what the hell I actually have on all these damn CDs, I use an excel workbook with a bunch of worksheets in there. One sheet has ALL of my CD playlists there with all the tracks. The other worksheets will be rough setlists depending on the genre.

LostAbyss
02-23-2012, 06:28 PM
why do people use cd's and not usb sticks? I see a lot of big name djs do this. Is there sound quality lost when using a usb stick?

Finnish_Fox
02-23-2012, 06:36 PM
I do not mix on CDJs, I'm on turntables but lots of DJs around do. What I've seen the most efficient is:

1 track per CD with track name, artist, BPM info and also structure of the song info all labeled on there.

Different CD cases for different genres.

You'll end up with a ton of CDs but if everything is well organized it should be very easy to find the next track from there.

Edit: I think the best type of CD are the ones you can print on. Easy to write on with a marker and looks neat aswell and you can go as far as burning CDs in double as a ''just in case''.

Hope this helped a little.

Not sure 1 track per disc is "efficient", per se. It is certainly very straight forward.

I happen to use USB sticks, but I burn based on buy date - all the tracks I buy on a certain date are kept together, split by genre of course.

Finnish_Fox
02-23-2012, 06:38 PM
why do people use cd's and not usb sticks? I see a lot of big name djs do this. Is there sound quality lost when using a usb stick?

I use USB... the "quality loss" is that CDs are .WAVs but a lot of people (non-pros) will convert their .WAVs to .MP3s for the USB stick.

I have 8GB sticks so I put the .WAV on mine.

moyo wilde
02-24-2012, 02:40 AM
i use mp3's and arrange the discs by bpm i play anywhere from 76 to 160. i also put different length intros of each song (16 for mixing out of a verse - 12;chorus and a short mix - 8;chorus - 4;short mix - and 0). they are organized alphabetically by title so (108 a through z). i get about 14 different songs per cd. 140ish tracks. two copies of each. i print a "cover" to label them. i list the song and the track number of the first song of the title. i put a spacer between every track, just a silent one second track, helps make it easier to find the first beat as sometimes itunes mixes the songs randomly (i don;t know why). most CDs have tracks that go 1, 11, 21, etc.

when i put in new music sometimes i will edit a cd. like if i only have 1 120 song that is hot hot hot, then something on my 120 discs has to go. i take out whatever i am not playing/feeling anymore. i think it is good way to keep my "crate" pruned, keeping it from being a 5000 song beast. currently it is at about 700 songs, i don't really want to go to far over 1000.

i keep them in a big cd binder the ones that you can see 8 cds. i prefer it to software actually cause i get to look through more songs at one time, than in a browser, when searching for the next track. open i see about is about 56 songs. turn the page another 56 songs.

i am thinking of burning some 32 bar intros for the faster songs.

Adzm00
02-24-2012, 04:51 AM
Do not do one track per CD.

I stopped reading the responses after the first couple of posts.

I've been using CDJs years now and so do a lot of the other DJs I know. You don't need to mark down the key, the bpm, the structure or any of that nonsense.

What I would suggest is no more than 6-8 tracks per CD (because labelling gets messy if its more), one artist per CD, and then 6-8 of their tracks. You can then arrange your CD's by artist name, and should be easy for you to find the stuff you want to play.

All this other stuff makes no sense, you should know your tracks anyway, so shouldn't have to go through bpm'ing and all that other rubbish.

Daniel S
02-24-2012, 06:54 AM
why do people use cd's and not usb sticks? I see a lot of big name djs do this. Is there sound quality lost when using a usb stick?

Because not all venues have players with USB capabillities. There are still plenty of CDJ1000s and CDJ800s out there.

As for the original question. It's different strokes for different folks.
I usually burn compilation discs with my latest music and put around 8-10 tracks per disc. I then name them something like: House Music Feb 2012 No. 2.

Nicadraus
02-24-2012, 07:17 AM
I do one song per CD and it works out fine. It also depends on what CDJ's your using as well.

The one song per CD is pointless and waste of time, money & effort in my opinion and many others too. I still don't understand why some people like you do it that way.

CDs ARE NOT VINYL! :P

moyo wilde
02-24-2012, 08:04 AM
@adzm00
i think the no bpm works if you are just doing songs that fall into a nice range. or possibly if you want to separate them by genre, but if your music goes through goes through a lot of different bpms you might need to least i feel that way. why would i want one song that is edm sitting on a disc that has mostly hip hop? i'd probably over look it or not knowing the bpm and having to think about it, then it also cuts down on the time to beatmatch cause i know the area i need to start off in.

DJ Nutty
02-27-2012, 04:29 AM
I always used the 1 track per cd method. I think if you specialise in 1 genre it works out alot better as typically you wont have any where near as many tracks as multi-genre dj's.

I used to cue edit the track to the 1st beat, and burn that, then a full version to each cd. So as soon as the auto cue was ready, I was ready to start beatmatching.

BurntToast
03-27-2012, 10:34 AM
Bumping this thread for more contribution. This is something I'm trying to figure out right now. I've considered burning CD's by artist, but that could get annoying every time I download a new track by an artist I already have, or if a track has multiple artists. I might just keep making mixes every so often, and then typing up cheat sheets that have track listings for each mix.

ampnation
03-28-2012, 04:28 PM
If they're audio CD's, I would make copies of the original CD's usually - I have a Pioneer home CDDA burner that uses CD-R Music Cd's. The price of licensing is included in the cost of the blank CD's so they're all fully legal exact copies of the original songs.

If they're mp3 CD's, see below

Either way, I would use a 3rd party program to find the song I want with the CD indexed.

I would have two copies of every CD.

I'm actually working toward this with my own system using the mp3 setup and the CD's will be a backup to a pair of 128GB USB flash drives. I'm using a Denon DN-HD2500 with the optional BU4500 dual CD drive.

The way I see it, I'll put the music on the USB drive organized almost identical to that of the CD's with each CD represented by a folder on the flash drive, and if need be (haven't researched the folder structure limitations yet) numbered and lettered folders to put those in. I can see having my songs all organized like this... based on the song name, first letter, first folder level = one of 26 folders A to Z, mid level numbered folder (I'll get back to this), level three folders containing songs, say 10 songs per folder in the order they're added to my library. Now at the mid level, the first folder would be 000 and would contain 10 song folders. The next mid level folder would be 001, and so on. The leading zeros allow for better sorting. That would allow me up to 100,000 songs per letter. I don't have near 100,000 in my library so I feel safe I'll have a whole new setup by the time I do.

Then I will have my music in a database I can query to find what I'm looking for with index numbers like, G-002-0-5 which would be the G folder, 2nd mid level folder, first song folder, 5th song.

I was a database admin and developed a database and most of the front end for that database for an insurance company so I know how to create my own software if I don't find any commercial products that meet my needs. I will be checking out media monkey.

Also, I will experiment and see how many songs it takes in the song folder before I consider it is slowing me down... I might go with something more like 80 songs per song folder. I think just guessing, I'll stick with something in the range of 30.

My database would be on a laptop but I would also have a binder with printouts organized by different sort criteria in case the laptop goes down.

de.j.l
03-28-2012, 05:20 PM
I have around 900 tracks, 1 track per cd. 1 big binder of bangers, 1 mid sized binder with mild energy tracks and 1 smaller binder with purely house... its the best way to do it if you ask me..

de.j.l
03-28-2012, 05:25 PM
Do not do one track per CD.

I stopped reading the responses after the first couple of posts.

I've been using CDJs years now and so do a lot of the other DJs I know. You don't need to mark down the key, the bpm, the structure or any of that nonsense.

What I would suggest is no more than 6-8 tracks per CD (because labelling gets messy if its more), one artist per CD, and then 6-8 of their tracks. You can then arrange your CD's by artist name, and should be easy for you to find the stuff you want to play.

All this other stuff makes no sense, you should know your tracks anyway, so shouldn't have to go through bpm'ing and all that other rubbish.

As far as I am concerned, the best method for YOU is the one you do and the best method for ME is the one I do, calling it nonsense and rubbish is just you being a little too set in your ways..

de.j.l
03-28-2012, 05:31 PM
The one song per CD is pointless and waste of time, money & effort in my opinion and many others too. I still don't understand why some people like you do it that way.

CDs ARE NOT VINYL! :P-


My reasoning is: less area to scratch, less chance your cd will skip; if I no longer want that cd in my binder, I just throw the one track out or give it away;cds are cheaper, hookers are too;); alot easier to find my tracks when theres one track name , not 10.. I could go on with reasons why I do it the way I do but im not going to.

Boomcie
03-28-2012, 05:40 PM
Do not do one track per CD.

I stopped reading the responses after the first couple of posts.

I've been using CDJs years now and so do a lot of the other DJs I know. You don't need to mark down the key, the bpm, the structure or any of that nonsense.

What I would suggest is no more than 6-8 tracks per CD (because labelling gets messy if its more), one artist per CD, and then 6-8 of their tracks. You can then arrange your CD's by artist name, and should be easy for you to find the stuff you want to play.

All this other stuff makes no sense, you should know your tracks anyway, so shouldn't have to go through bpm'ing and all that other rubbish.

This...except make two copies

CC Ricers
03-28-2012, 05:50 PM
The best method, IMO, is sticking around 8 or 9 tracks (or however many tracks you can fit really) of the same genre and the same intensity onto a CD and then organising the CDs in your wallet by order of intensity, i.e. deep house at the start. Duplicate the CDs if you want/ have enough spare CDs

This is how I'd do it, and when I played vinyl, I organized my stuff first by genre then style and intensity. For huge albums (like 25 tracks or more) that have a variety in styles I would organize the tracks in CDs by style instead of by their original order. Because of the immediacy for wanting to burn a CD for new tracks, I always buy tracks in groups that will fit well together.

Grifff
03-29-2012, 09:30 AM
Realised I already posted in this thread and now I can't delete this post

BurntToast
03-29-2012, 10:21 AM
How many of you guys organize your CDs into tracks that are in the same key?

EDIT: I suppose i could always add it to the track label in parentheses.

Finnish_Fox
03-29-2012, 12:24 PM
I have around 900 tracks, 1 track per cd. 1 big binder of bangers, 1 mid sized binder with mild energy tracks and 1 smaller binder with purely house... its the best way to do it if you ask me..

...so when CDs are outdated and everything is played off flash drives, 1-track per folder in a folder of folders which is in another folders of folders containing folders?

Finnish_Fox
03-29-2012, 12:25 PM
How many of you guys organize your CDs into tracks that are in the same key?

Nope. Don't believe in mixing in key.

KLH
03-29-2012, 12:40 PM
I split my music tracks in half and burn each half to a separate CD. That way when I mix, I can beatmatch and mix in other the half of the track BEFORE it's supposed to play! I know, genius.

For the one or two times that I can't find the other half of the track, I yell "REMIX" into the microphone and drop Michael Jackson's Beat It (sped up 15% of course)! The crowd goes NUTS and panties drop onto the dancefloor! Of course, just at that time, I throw the Jesus pose... 'cause I just rock.

Just sayin'.

-KLH

Finnish_Fox
03-29-2012, 12:43 PM
I split my music tracks in half and burn each half to a separate CD. That way when I mix, I can beatmatch and mix in other the half of the track BEFORE it's supposed to play! I know, genius.

:zany:


For the one or two times that I can't find the other half of the track, I yell "REMIX" into the microphone and drop Michael Jackson's Beat It (sped up 15% of course)! The crowd goes NUTS and panties drop onto the dancefloor! Of course, just at that time, I throw the Jesus pose... 'cause I just rock.

:slayer:

Boomcie
03-29-2012, 02:07 PM
I split my music tracks in half and burn each half to a separate CD. That way when I mix, I can beatmatch and mix in other the half of the track BEFORE it's supposed to play! I know, genius.

For the one or two times that I can't find the other half of the track, I yell "REMIX" into the microphone and drop Michael Jackson's Beat It (sped up 15% of course)! The crowd goes NUTS and panties drop onto the dancefloor! Of course, just at that time, I throw the Jesus pose... 'cause I just rock.

Just sayin'.

-KLH

:love:

blackfoxbb
03-29-2012, 03:12 PM
irrelevant question.
no matter how other people do it, as no matter how they organize they library or which production soft do they use.

you must find a system that works for you. what works for me can be useless for you.

run some trials using flash-drives as if it was a cd ( so you can erase is as many times as you want) until you figure out which system is better for you. then burn the cds using that system.

epik1
03-29-2012, 10:08 PM
Not sure if it's been said but don't forget to put what Key the song is in too!
I don't mix with CD's/CDJ's but I've seen the pros do it.