Below is something I thought of this morning in an online group for DJs facilitated by a few people including the ever-thoughtful Sumugan Sivanesan around tagging our music libraries. There may be better ways to do this – leave a comment if you’ve got some ideas!

I’ve started using MP3tag (Mac/PC only from what I found) to tag my music library. I’d been using MP3 Tag Editor Pro, but their site went offline and I could actually write to the developer directly with MP3tag.

Using Comments

I use the ‘Comments’ field in mp3s to put my own ‘vibes’ in like: intro, peaktime, acid, build, freakout, tribal, birds, sci-fi, melodic so I can search/navigate feelings/moods when I’m DJing – or create ‘smart playlists’ that auto-update as I tag new tracks.

If stuff is well-tagged – rather than algorithmically ‘recommended’ – I can start to see clusters of tracks that ‘make sense’ for my own ‘DJ understanding’ of my music library, unique to me.

Using Your Tags with Other DJ Software

Following this, once I start bringing my music library into other systems – like Rekordbox or MixedinKey- I can then augment my DJ knowledge with things the software will do to enrich my tracks.

MixedinKey for example can do pitch analysis to find tracks which are harmonically related. This opens up a layer of harmonic mixing (on top of the subjective system you create).

Joined with your own system, you can then do cool things like: ‘find all songs in 2B (F-Sharp Major) + ‘acid’ + ‘bird’ + ‘peaktime’).

Tip: put names of tracks you know ‘mix’ well in each track’s comments so when searching for one, the other one shows up:)

Data Agnosticism

Another benefit of tagging your music library is that it can ‘work’ across different software, DJ equipment or mp3 players, a kind of data agnosticism. For example, since I never had regular access to Pioneers to practice on, I got good at tagging things to search in iTunes. However, since my library is now tagged – and metadata stays with mp3s – I can now import these into things like Rekordbox and still be able to navigate my library with my own system.

Tip: this is generally a good practice – making sure you can take your data with you into other systems. I can’t open Ableton files with anything other than Ableton Live for example – but at least I can use the recordings.

Using Tags with Ableton Live

My general workflow is:

1. Listen to tracks in iTunes/Apple Music (I recently switched to Swinsian to retain control over my music library)
2. Add keyword tags into Comments
3. Create smart playlists
4. Open up Ableton.
5. Run music player app side by side with Ableton
6. Drag and drop into Ableton as needed.

There may be easier ways to do this, but the major benefit for me here is that I can perform works-in-progress directly from Ableton (MIDI clips, loops, effects etc.).

And I can work on my sets anywhere with just a set of headphones.