I was reading a post by robricc that mentioned he uses a "Artist -> Album -> Tunes" approach to listening to music, and it got me thinking: this is the way I've traditionally listened to CDs (there's no other way), and I'd imagine it's how most people think, but it's definately not the way I want to think about my music.

I grew to dislike CDs because it forced me to make decisions all the time -- do I really want to take the time to switch CDs just to hear this album? maybe I should listen to a different album, I've listened to this alot lately, etc...

I got the empeg mainly because it lets me put 50+ albums on a playlist and play them all on "random", which to me is the best way to listen to music -- especially the "least times played" mode. that way, I don't have to stress out about choosing CDs all the time, or "overlistening" to music that I really like.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough...does anyone else have any quirky ways that they use their empeg?

Here recently I have just been hitting next until i find something that fits my mood. Reggae time right now.

Tony had a post like this some time back. I've found that there is little point in having playlists with Artists - Albums - Tracks and I've eliminated most of the Albums, so Tracks appear directly under Artists. If I think I want to hear a particular Artist, I can just call up the playlist. If I want to listen to a particular Album, I'll do a search.
Generally I just call up a playlist and skip the tracks I don't feel like.

Am I the only person that actually likes to listen to albums as they were initially intended to be presented? I've even thought about recording some inner groove noise to add in the middle of some playlists.

It depends on the album.

Am I the only person that actually likes to listen to albums as they were initially intended to be presented?

I've considered this...

On one hand, obviously the producer and artist intended for the album to be heard a particular way.

On the other hand, maybe the band only really liked 5 of their songs, and put in the rest because an album can't only have 5 songs on it.

In the past, I made myself listen to the whole album just to get the whole experience of it. And also so I didn't have to change CDs all the time while driving and endanger myself and others.

But now, I've decided, screw it, why listen to songs I don't like? I'll keep the whole album on the empeg to maintain the integrity of the "album", but if I don't like a song, I'm deleting it from my playlist.

I've found that there is little point in having playlists with Artists - Albums - Tracks

There is one reason to maintain that structure.

About 90% of the time I play root playlist->shuffled->least-often played. Frequently a song will come up that reminds me of another song I'd like to hear. With the new Insert capabilities of the 2.0b3 and higher software, it is easy to make that song the next to play -- IF I can find it. Yes, I know, I could dig out the remote and laboriously key in "Tchaikovsky-Symphony #6, 4" and that would be enough to nail the 4th movement of the Pathetique symphony. And while I am doing that, I would probably get to hear two more songs before I finished keying it in.

Instead, it is much easier to use the front panel buttons... playlists->classical->composers T through Z->Tchaikovsky->Symphonies->Symphony #6->4th Mvt. and hold the down button to insert. But this only works if the music is arranged in a logical, hierarchical fashion. If, for instance, that track were in some sort of a generic "Romantic era symphonic music" playlist, I'd never find it.

To each his own, however, and YMMV. But just you wait -- when I get to be King of the World, I am going to make sure that everybody does it MY way -- or else Off With Their Heads!

tanstaafl.

Exactly why the flexibility of this unit is so good. there are two ways of searching for tracks. Everyone's a winner! We all have our tastes and we all are able to find our way of organising it.

On the other hand, maybe the band only really liked 5 of their songs, and put in the rest because an album can't only have 5 songs on it.

Oh, come now, I doubt that. Most artists write tens of songs and then the best ones get put on an album. I severely doubt that artists put music on their own albums that they don't like just to be filler, at least not as often as you make it sound. Of course, some artists put songs on the album that I don't like and consider to be filler, but that's my opinion.

I, personally, really enjoy the album experience. I'm the type of person who does listen to a whole album all the way through several times repeatedly to get the best feel of the music. It's gotten to the point where I find it wierd to shuffle my Led Zeppelin playlist because it's wierd to me to hear something from Physical Graffiti after something from II, and moreso the other way around. Much of the time, I'll listen to a song and as it nears its close I'll already be singing the next song on the album in my head.

A lot of the time, you can hear the artist's intent much better by listening to the whole album straight through. Other times, like anyone else, I like to put the whole player on random.

A good friend of mine is a musician and let me tell you he very painstakingly puts together his albums. The order does matter, there is a methodology to it. When albums were albums and there were two sides even more thought went into it as they had essentially two beginnings.

I remember when CD players came out with shuffle, none of my CD's sounded right with shuffle on. Of course now I randomize the whole damn player and get amazing new transitions, Bach to Beastie Boys etc...

Its an empeg one of the biggest points is it forces onto you no play order what so ever unless you want to

I'll chime in since you mentioned me. I like to listen to an album at a time in the order it was intended. This is the reason my playlists are structured Artist -> Album -> Tunes.

Every now and then I will put the Empeg into full shuffle when I want variety from song to song. In the year and a half I've had the Empeg, I've never shuffled tunes within a single album. I think I've searched for something only two or three times since it wasn't yet bound to a playlist.

That's just the way I do things. The Empeg has a flexibility that nothing else has. Take advantage of that. Structure your music the way you like it.

I also have it organized as Artist -> Album -> Tunes. Although 80% of the time everything is in shuffle mode there is that other 20% of the time I hear a song and I wanna hear the rest of the album the way it was intented, so now with the new hijack kernel simply press the volume knob (who wants to search for the dang remote?) and everything is unshuffled and back to the way it should be, once that album is done playing press it again and back to random play. Seems to work very well for my listening habbits.

Personally I have my playlists arranged genre->artist->album->tunes, where genre is quite loose, and sometimes is just a list of tunes rather than of playlists. That way I can get straight to my blues collection, or my classic rock, or my "Songs that Kick Ass" playlist. It also allows me to shuffle all my blues, rock, etc., without doing a search. I've found this to be a bit faster than doing a search. It also allows me to put artists in mutiple genres. For instance, where do the Beasty Boys fit?
I would definitely recommend a level of playlists above artists, it can make things much simpler and yet more flexible.

In the year and a half I've had the Empeg, I've never shuffled tunes within a single album.

Yeah, I tried that this morning, and I agree with you, it's weird. I think it's because, when I que up just one album, I imagine "playing a cd" the old way with the physical cd, and get all annoyed when the tracks are in an unpredictable order.

The genre->artist->album->tunes layout is how I also have mine, but a few have genre->sub-genre->artist->album->tunes. I find this works best for me so I can listen to an enture grouping on shuffle, and not have some songs sound out of place for my mood at the time.

I have mine in the standard Artist->Album->Track format, except that I also have a Genre directory at the top level, under which are all my genre playlists. This allows me to quickly get to a particular genre that I want to listen to.

These genre playlists are made up of individual songs, as well as songs that are also under the Artist structure.

My current layout is as follows:

In the root directory, I have a bunch of Artists playlists. Beneath those, I have album playlists.

In the root directory, I also have some "Mood" playlists. I enclose the names of these mood playlists in parentheses so that they show up first alphabetically in the playlists menu. For example, some of my mood playlists are:

(Low Key)
(LAN Party)
(Demo)

The mood playlists show up as the very first items in the playlists menu, with the artists appearing afterwards.

In Emplode, I view the Root playlist in order of "Position" and then carefully order the list so that the artists are listed first and then the mood playlists are listed last. This allows for the ub-shuffle-around-song trick to work (see here for details).

Usually, I play the entire player, shuffled by Least Recently Played. This is usually accomplished by pressing "down down down" on the front panel.

In this mode, the "next track" button gets used a lot. When a new song starts, if it's not the most perfect song for my mood at the time, I press Next until I get to one that is.

Note that I'm not usually skipping the song because I dislike it (there isn't a lot of stuff on the player I dislike), I'm skipping it because it's not absolutely perfect for my mood at that exact time. Usually it takes only a few "skips" before a song comes up that I want to hear. Do THAT with a CD changer, heh.

If I hear a song that happens to fit well within an album, I press the "0" button on the remote control and it unshuffles around the current song, and I'm dropped into the middle of that album. For instance, if I'm shuffling the whole player and "Money" comes up, I press "0" and can listen to the remainder of Side Two of Dark Side of the Moon uninterrupted.

If you simply want to hear more of a given artist, or more of a given album, and you don't care about the order, use the Tweak Order feature.

If you have stuff on your player that you need to keep there, but that you'd rather not have show up in a "down down down" shuffle, then use either Wendy Filters or the Ignore As Child tag to handle that situation.

Note that in a future release of the software, we won't even need to create Artist/Album playlists any more, those will appear automatically as part of the "Soup" views.

Hmm. This post is starting to look like a FAQ entry. Maybe I should put it in there?

Interesting, I used the same concept of putting "mood" playlists in parenthesis when I organized my music that way on my computer.

I really like the concept of "un-shuffling" around a song, but I'm worried about the player's behavior:

let's say you're at number 65 in your shuffled playlist, which is The Beta Band, and you unshuffle so that you can hear all of The Beta Band. When you hit the shuffle button again, does it:

1) shuffle in the same order as before
2) shuffle in a different order, BUT make sure that you won't hear songs 1-64 in the original order anytime soon, since you just heard them
3) neither

I've played around it and I'm pretty sure it doesn't do option 1, but I'm not positive.

PS. When you shuffle by "least often played", it seems like it doesn't necessarily play all "zero-played" songs first, but tries to generally put them in front according to some weighted algorithm...is this what's really happening?

...With software this powerful, I want to make sure I do the right amount of adjusting-myself-to-software vs. adjusting-software-to-my-preconceptions.

When you hit the shuffle button again, does it (...)

When you shuffle again, its behavior depends on the shuffle mode you selected.

(Note that pressing the 0 key on the remote will toggle to the last shuffle mode.)

If your last shuffle mode was "random", then when you shuffle again, it will be a random re-shuffling from scratch. If the shuffle mode was "least recently played" then it will weight the things you already heard towards the bottom of the shuffle.

PS. When you shuffle by "least often played", it seems like it doesn't necessarily play all "zero-played" songs first, but tries to generally put them in front according to some weighted algorithm...is this what's really happening?

Correct. It's a weighted shuffle, not an absolute ordering.

Note that the "weight" factor for "least recently played" has a fairly short memory. 12 or 14 days if I recall. So anything you heard two weeks ago is considered "ages ago" and is fair game for the top of the shuflle. This was discussed in another recent thread where I expressed my personal opinion that this was a bug and not a feature.

It re-shuffles the whole list again. However, there are two partial remedies for that:

• Make your shuffle mode 'Least recently played'. In that case just played tunes will be strongly weighted 'down', towards end of the running order, and you will be unlikely to hear them again in a day or two.
• Before unshuffling set a bookmark. When you are done with the album and want to return to your shuffled list, 'goto' that bookmark. (See FAQ for bookmarks - in short, they store the complete running order and your position within it.)
  

Since I usually can't decide what I want to listen to and consequently shuffle the whole player, this isn't of much concern for me.

I just thought I'd add my 2 cents about how my playlists are structured. Basically, it's very similar to Tony's layout, with an extra sub directory for "All artists", to allow for quicker navigation to the various "Mood" playlists.

It looks like this:

Root
-All Artists
---Artists
-----Albums
-------Songs
-Mood1 ("Chill")
---Artists
-----Albums
-------Songs
-Mood2 ("Electronic")
---Artists
-----Albums
-------Songs
-Mood3 ("Snowboarding")
---Artists
-----Albums
-------Songs

...and so on. I have probably 7 or 8 "Mood" playlists, all with various stuff in them.

The beauty of the empeg, is that these nested playlists can be played at any level. So, if I want to listen to a certain genre of music, I hit play at one of the top levels. If I want to listen to a particular artist, I browse to that artist, and then hit play. The same goes for albums, and even songs. Another cool thing about the empeg, is that all of the music is stored in a database, and the playlists are really just shortcuts, so that the same song can be in 27 different playlists, but only one copy is actually stored on the unit.

Note also that in my layout, "All Artists" does in fact have every single artist on the whole player under it.

Anaywayz, I'm insanely happy with how this setup works on my player, so I thought I'd mention it here.

My current favorite "most logical" method for structuring music by writer/composer is:

Genre (Jazz, Classical, ...)

Composer Last Name, Composer First Name Middle++ in the title
Composer's full name in standard order under "artist"

then what is done is it is alphabetized by title per genre, then per composer it is alphabetized by what is most logical, typically title.

Calvin

Hmm. This post is starting to look like a FAQ entry. Maybe I should put it in there?

Actually it looks like another post you put up about the same subject weeks ago. Verbatim. I guess that's going to happen quite a bit.

Time to expand that FAQ with some more common answers to recent posts. Within a couple of days/weeks I think we'll see a lot more people posting nothing but "FAQ" with a link.

I did want people to register, and we've had an amazing turn out this week. But damn, the S/N has decreased a bit and there are now way too many posts for me to reliably catch up with.

Having an organized hierarchy of artists is an invaluable asset. I don't know how some people work without it. I can't see having only some of the more simple schemes I've seen. this might work for a handful of albums, but I couldn't stand it with my collection (450-500 = 5900 tracks). I've now also made use of the fact that the playlist ordering isn't forced toalphabetic if you don't want it to be. I've yet to rename artist playlists to put the word "the" at the begining though. I really do hope the player's soup view engine deals with this nicely.

I love the fact that I can completely disagree with the way someone has their player set up - and still set mine up the way *I* want to. Flexibility like this is very much "a good thing."

Bruno

Time to expand that FAQ with some more common answers to recent posts.

I have been. Once a day or so. Just little additions, edits, and upgrades here and there. I don't always announce them here on the BBS.