The Haiku Review?

The Files Are In the Computer?? Part III - iTunes Goodness

Part III in a continuing series.

I gotta tell you, I love iTunes. Not the music store, just the application itself. It is actually a very well made piece of software. A lot of people don't like it though. Some of them are just natural Apple haters, but most of them don't like iTunes because it is not the most intuitive program.

iTunes has a philosophy similar to Gmail, "Forget how you've done things in the past. Our way is the right way." This would normally piss me off, because I hate learning all about an application that is supposed to do something as simple as play music. But it turns out that iTunes is an extremely powerful application... so much so that I think that it is worth your time to learn all about how it works.

In my line of work I handle very large databases. These databases contain millions and millions of scanned documents. Every document is reviewed by a person, and has its characteristics (title, date, etc.) coded into the database. So for any given document, you can see the related important "metadata." Then, if you need to find a particular document, you can search for it very quickly simply by telling the database to find a document with "metadata" matching what you are looking for. So instead of flipping through a million documents to find the one from March 2nd, 2006, you can simply search for the date and it will return any documents from that date. This is called a "relational database."

iTunes works in the exact same way, except instead of scanned paper documents it contains digital music files. Every music file (song) has "metadata" attached to it that you can type in, such as song name, artist name, album title, genre, etc. This data is stored in the database with your music, so if you want to find a particular song or artist you can jump to it extremely quickly by just typing a few letters or running a quick search. I'm going to show you how to make the most of this database.

Now, I'm sure you've used Winamp or a similar program to play your MP3s. Winamp is great too, but it does not have the library / organization power of iTunes. Plus, if you have an iPod you must use iTunes to upload your music to the 'pod.

The first thing you need to get used to with iTunes is the lack of "folders." Let's face it; everything you do in the Windows environment is based around folders. And you generally think of your music library in the same way: Artist folder, with album folders within. Or perhaps Genre folders with the songs inside. iTunes, though, at first appears to "ignore" your folders. All of your songs just appear in a big list. But there is more than meets the eye here.

First, make sure Library is highlighted in the column on the left. Then go to Edit > Show Browser (or click the "Browse" eye icon in the upper right, or hit CNTRL-B). The "list" of your songs will now split in half. The top half will contain the Browser, which consists of 3 sections: Genre, Artist, and Album. The bottom half contains the library of songs which is filtered by the Browser.

So, for example, if you pick "Rock" as your genre, the list of songs at the bottom becomes narrowed down to only those songs that have the Genre metadata tagged as "Rock." Now if you were to click on, say, Nirvana from the Artist section of the Browser, the list at the bottom will be narrowed down to songs that have the Genre metadata tagged as "Rock" and the Artist metadata tagged as "Nirvana." Finally, you can go to the Album section of the Browser and pick which Nirvana album you want (I would recommend In Utero). The list at the bottom will be narrowed down to the songs tagged as Genre - "Rock," Artist - "Nirvana," and Album - "In Utero."

Seems like a lot of work just to get to one album, doesn't it? Why is this so great? Wouldn't browsing folders be easier?

Well, I just showed you the long way to narrow the list down to an album. There is a much quicker way. Let's say you know you want to listen to In Utero. You don't care what Genre the album is coded as. You know it is a Nirvana album but you have so many Nirvana albums and bootlegs that it would take at least a minute to pick In Utero out of the list of Nirvana albums. Here's what to do: Just click anywhere in the "Album" section of Browser so that any album is highlighted. Now just type the first few letters of the album you want on the keyboard (in this case "i" - "n"), and the cursor will jump to that album. You can do this in any section of the Browser to jump immediately to what you want! If you are in the song list at the bottom half of the screen, you need to make sure that the songs are sorted correctly, though. So, for example, if you want to jump to a particular song by title, click on the column "Name" in the song list so that the list sorts the songs alphabetical by name. Now you can type the first few letters of the song and it will jump directly to it.

Another quick way to find anything in iTunes is to use the Search field (in the upper right, next to the "Browse" eye icon). This is pretty self explanatory... you type in what you are looking for and the list is narrowed down instantly to just what you wanted. So if you type "In Utero" you will just get the songs from In Utero listed. But if you type in something broader like "Nirvana" you will get a list of all of your Nirvana songs. The Browser still works here, though, so once you have used the Search to filter everything down to your Nirvana songs, you can pick which Genre or Album you want from the Browser. To clear the filter, just click the "x" at the end of the Search field, or just delete whatever you typed.

Now let us get into customizing your iTunes experience to make it the most user-friendly and useful. Go to Edit > Preferences (or hit CTRL-,). This will bring up the iTunes preferences menu. This menu has almost every option you will need in iTunes.

The first tab is the General tab. Here you can adjust the text size of the Source column (the column on the left hand side) and the Song list (including the Browser text). You can also choose to show or not show Party Shuffle and Videos. If you don't have any Video to put in iTunes, uncheck the Video option. I would leave Party Shuffle checked; it is a fun feature which I will discuss later.

If you aren't big on filling in your Genres, you can uncheck the "Show genre when browsing" option. This will remove the Genre column from the Browser window. I would leave this checked, though.

The next option is very important. Check the box for "Group compilations when browsing." This makes sure that any album that you have that has various artists on it (like a movie soundtrack, for example) will be put in a special section called Compilations under Artists. This way you don't have to scroll through a million different artist names that each have only one song for a single CD. Later, I will show you how to do this on your iPod too. Trust me, it makes browsing your Artist list and your iPod so much easier. But, it is important to make sure that your various artist albums are tagged as "Compilation > Yes." This is how iTunes knows to group the various artists together into one single album. I'll discuss tagging later.

Next is the choice for "Show links to Music store." I don't really buy anything from the iTunes music store, but even if I did I wouldn't choose this option. It puts a little link to the iTunes music store after every single song in your list. Honestly, why? I guess it is useful if you are constantly searching the music store for different artists, but I just feel like it is marketing overkill. Uncheck it.

Checking for updates and language are up to you.

Next, flip to the "Sharing" tab. If your computer is on a LAN (local area network) with some other computers, you may wish to turn on sharing. This is nice if you have roomates - you can access each others Libraries without actually copying music back and forth. Check "Look for shared music" and "Share my music" to enable this feature. You can also choose to share only certain playlists or to add a password to your Library.

Now skip over to the "Parental Control" tab. You can disable parts of iTunes here if you want. I chose to disable the Radio, because I don't listen to streaming internet radio (I'm sure it is cool, but I have a lot of music between my Library and my XM!). You can also disable the Music store here, which I would recommend if you aren't using it. This should get rid of that annoying banner at the bottom of the screen too.

Finally, choose the "Advanced" tab. This tab is so important that it has it's own 3 mini-tabs. Let's start with the General tab under Advanced. The first box lets you select where to store your iTunes library. If the default is ok you can leave it, but if you have a full hard drive and would like to keep your music somewhere else, click the "Change" button and browse to the drive where you would like your music to be stored. You can even use a network drive if you like. Also, if your library has grown too large for your computer, you can change the location of the library here and then click Advanced > Consolidate Library to move everything! This is a great feature... it allows you to keep your ratings and play counts when you move your library.

Next, check the box for "Keep iTunes folder organized." This will make sure that your library is kept in uniform folders (Artist > Album > Songs). Also check "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to Library." This will put a copy of your music in the library folder on your hard drive if you drag it into iTunes. Of course, if the folder is already there I think it will make a duplicate of it, so if that is the case maybe leave this unchecked.

Check "Use iTunes as the default player for audio files" (self explanatory) and leave the buffer set to Medium. If you have an Airport Express for your wireless setup, check "Look for remote speakers connected with Airtunes." This way you can play your iTunes music on your stereo (assuming you have the Airport Express hooked to your stereo, that is).

Finally (on this tab), check "Keep Mini Player on top of all other windows" and "Show iTunes icon in system tray." I'll explain the Mini Player in a bit (the icon is really up to you, but I like to have it in the system tray).

Ok, now switch to the Importing tab. The "On CD Insert" drop down choice is a personal preference for how you want iTunes to treat a CD. I have mine set to "Show Songs." Next, change "Import Using" to MP3 Encoder. This ensures that any music you rip from CD is in MP3 format. MP3 is a lossy format and the other choices listed actually are superior in terms of audio, but they are not as universal as MP3. Just about every audio player out there supports MP3, so this is how I like to save my music. If you would like to use one of the other formats it is your choice. If you do choice MP3, I would recommend setting it to High Quality (160kbs). This is just a little bit less quality than the original CD but the file size is still pretty small. I think it is a good compromise.

Uncheck "Play Songs When Importing," as this slows the ripping process down significantly. Check "Create filenames with track number" and uncheck "Use error correction when reading Audio CDs."

Finally, flip to the Burning tab. Set the Preferred speed to whatever you prefer. If you want to burn audio CDs compatible with CD players (like your car stereo) choose Audio CD (and set the Gap Between Songs to None). You can also burn a MP3 CD if you would like an MP3 CD to play in stereos that can decode MP3, or a data CD if you want to put the MP3s on a disc for someone's computer.

WHEW! We're done with the tabs now. You can click OK.

Now, for some fun tips!

1) If you have purchased any music from the iTunes music store, the songs also include the album artwork. If you'd like to see this artwork in iTunes as you browse your library, hit CTRL-G. This will add an artwork browser to the lower left hand corner. If you would like to add artwork to an album, first find the artwork online (try google, or amazon, or allmusic). Now highlight the songs in the album in your iTunes library. Now just click on the picture of the artwork in your webbrowser and drag it over to the Artwork Browser in iTunes. The picture will now display for all the highlighted songs!

2) See the plus sign in the lower right hand corner? That is the New Playlist button. Click it and you can name the playlist, then drag songs from your library to the playlist.

3) If you hold down the Shift button, this plus sign will become a gear icon. If you click it it will create a Smart Playlist. Smart Playlists are really cool. They allow you to create a playlist based on certain rules or criteria of your choosing, rather than actually picking specific songs. So, for example, you could have a Smart Playlist of all of your Hip Hop songs that are longer than 1:00 minute long... this will get rid of all of the annoying skits between tracks. Or, you could have a Smart Playlist where Year is 0 to find all of the albums that don't have a Year filled in. You can actually get very complicated with these playlists, and have one playlist pull from multiple other playlists. And since they update on their own, you never have to touch them again once they are created. For more info check out Smart Playlist. They haven't updated their site in a while but the old posts have some great examples of how cool Smart Playlists can be.

4) Make your Nano into a Shuffle! Or even your Video Ipod! The Shuffle is cool because you just plug it in and tell it to auto fill itself with songs randomly picked from your Library. Then it plays these songs back randomly. So you just get a nice mix of tunes to go. But if you have a Nano (or an Ipod), you have to pick what music you want on it. Here is how I have worked around this to make the Nano function like a Shuffle. First, create a Smart Playlist called "Random Nano." In the Smart Playlist settings, uncheck "Match the Following Rule." Check the "Limit To" box. If you have a 2 GB Nano put a 2 in the next box (or perhaps 1.75 so you have some space left over), "GB" in the second box, and Selected By "Random" in the third box. Check "Match Only Checked Songs" and "Live Updating." This will create a totally random list of 2GB worth of music (or whatever size you set it to). Now right click on your Nano or iPod in the Source list and set it to Automatically Update based on the "Random Nano" playlist only. When you plug in your Nano it will add all of the random songs from the Smart Playlist. Then when you want to listen to them randomly select "Shuffle Songs" on your Nano. So now you have a random assortment of songs from your Library being played back randomly, exactly like a Shuffle behaves! When you want new songs, click on the Random Nano playlist, highlight all of the songs in the playlist, and click Delete. The list will refill itself with all new music, and your Nano will update accordingly.

Ok that is a lot of tips and info for now. I'm gonna save more for another post!

posted by averagejoe @ 8:17 PM