Don't have many songs? Use these techniques to add variety to your song list.
Are you always using the same song list or two over and over? Don't have many songs to choose from? Find the process of creating a new song list a lot of work (it is)?
Here are a couple of tips to easily create more variety. This tip assumes you have an existing song list to work with.
Start BDJ4, select Manage, select the Edit menu, and select Load. Choose an existing song list and select the Select button in the dialog. Now select the Edit menu again, and select Create Copy.
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I will rename the copy of the song list by selecting the name in the entry box and typing in the new name.
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An easy way to create some variety is to replace some songs with other songs. Select a song in your song list that you want to replace. For this example, The selected Rumba will be replaced.
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Select the Song Selection tab, then select the filter button.
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In the filter dialog, select Rumba as the dance, and make any other selections. In this example, Rumba is selected, and the Dance Rating is changed to Great.
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Select the Apply button.
In the Song Selection tab, songs that are already in the song list are marked with a blue mark at the left side. Select a song that is not marked, and then select the Select button. Note that after pressing the Select button, the song now has a blue mark, as it is now in the song list. In this example, the Rumba, Beautiful Maria of my Soul is already in the song list, and the highlighted song, Canela, has just been added to the song list.
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Now switch back to the Song List tab. Note that there are two Rumba songs in a row now, and the song that was just added is selected.
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Select the Rumba that is being replaced, and then select the Remove button.
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The Rumba has been replaced with a different Rumba, and the order of the dances in the song list is preserved. Now repeat this process for 5-6 more songs in the song list. Now you have a new song list with several changes.
This entire process can be repeated each week, and the song list will change over time.
Variety tip #2: Changing the Mix
The Mix is the order of the dances in the song list and how often each dance is played. Even when changing the mix, I also recommend going through the process in the first tip #1 above so that there are some changes to which songs are played.
If you already have a new song list after following the process in tip #1, just continue using that song list, or load a song list and create a copy as outlined in tip #1 above.
Now select the Actions menu, and select Mix.
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Note that ths song list now has an entirely new ordering. No songs were changed, the songs from the song list were placed into a new order.
The mixing process works quite well, but isn't perfect. The song list should be reviewed to make sure that the mix is good. If you find problem areas (usually dances of similar types that are too close together), use the up and down arrows to re-arrange songs, use the Actions -> Swap function to swap songs, or add songs from your song selection.
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References:
wiki: Management : Edit Song Lists
wiki: Subjects : Song Lists
wiki: Subjects : Filter Dialog