Organizing Your Library

Entering ID3 Tags

Having correct information in all your tracks will mean you can find any song when you need it. There are numerous third-party applications which you can use to enter information into the tracks, or if you are ripping your tracks yourself from CD, you may be able to use the CDDB to retrieve the track names from the internet. The BPM tag can be useful for finding tracks to mix, and there are applications to automatically determine the BPM of a track and put that information into the tag.

To find some applications which are popular among our users, check out this thread on the forum.

Browse and Search

Browse view can find a track very quickly if the tags are correct. For a set which you haven’t completely planned out, get used to the browse function to help you find songs which meet criteria on the fly.

For instant access to a specific song, type keywords into the live search. As you type, the songs visible in your library will be narrowed down accordingly.

Making Crates

If you’re used to ordering your record crates according to your set, then the crates in Scratch LIVE will be handy. Make new crates by clicking the (+) button under the crate list and drag songs from your library into them. Once the songs are in there, click on the crate and order them how you like. One song can be in any number of crates.

iTunes

iTunes integration in Scratch LIVE is very good, so if you’re already organizing your songs with it, your library and playlists will already be there when you start up Scratch LIVE. Remember that at the moment AAC files aren’t currently supported (so songs you buy from the iTunes music store won’t be able to be played using Scratch LIVE) and if you’re using iTunes to rip CDs, remember to change the import settings to MP3, WAV, AIFF or with the 3rd party plug-in; OGG vorbis.

External Drives

With most people using Scratch LIVE on laptops, external drives are the most popular way to add storage and performance for reasonable cost.
If you build a library including songs on an external drive, you will be able to plug your drive into another Scratch LIVE DJ’s setup and have your songs available on the fly. External drives also help system performance since the heads on the internal drive are free to fetch information for the system, while the song data can be read whenever it is needed.

One point to remember is that if your external drive is USB2, you may have a shortage of USB bandwidth if you run it on the same hub as your SL 1, keyboard, mouse, Bluetooth dongle etc. So test it out! If you have problems, search the Scratch LIVE forum and try some of the solutions listed there.

If you don’t know what any of this means, call that computer nerd friend of yours and ask them, or Rane Corporations DJ expert Shaun Whitcher:

shaunw@rane.com
(425) 551-1834(8 am to 5 pm Pacific Time: west coast USA)