Tips & Tricks -- Getting the most out of your mixes.
MusicMagic Mixer is designed to be customizable to the way you want to listen to your music - there are many options to adjust the lists you create. If you don't like the lists you are getting, try some of the following tips.
- The song list depends on having appropriate songs available. If you have one Soul song in a collection of Punk music, and try to make a selection based on the Soul song, you still won't get any other Soul songs. (Recall that the genre names are extracted from your original music files, and are not created by MusicMagic - if you disagree with any classification, you can use the tag editor of your choice to update the tag, and then use the Library/Refresh option to update the genres visible in the Mixer.)
- If there are songs on the list which you feel are a bad match, you can right-click on the song and choose Less Like This. This will create a new list which will remove the undesired songs, and others like it. This restriction will apply only to the current mix, and not future mixes, so feel free to experiment. If, on the other hand, there are some songs on the list which you really like, you can choose More Like This to include more songs like that one.
- If there's one or two songs on any list which just you don't want to hear, you can delete them before pressing play (select the song or songs you don't want to hear, and press the delete key). This will remove them from the playlist, but not from the database, or from your computer. (You can remove songs from your database by using the Library/Remove Songs option). You can also use Replace This Song to delete the song and replace it with a different one. Replace This Artist will remove all songs by the artist(s) associated with the selected song(s), and replace them with new ones. This "ban" will only apply to the current mix.
- You can take advantage of genre filtering to remove all songs from undesired categories. First, choose File/Customize Options and select
Restrict mix to selected genres. This will cause the New Mix button to honor the genre selections currently in place. This means that the generated list will only include genres which are currently selected. If you select a genre with only a few songs, then the Mixer will only have a few songs to choose from when creating the list. With genre filtering enabled, you will be able to ban genres from lists using a right-click on the offending song. For instance, if you create a mix and find a Country song, you can right-click on the song and choose Hide Genre: Country. All the Country songs will be removed from the list, and the Country genre will be de-selected. (To see the genres in the song list, choose File/Customize Options, click on the Playlist View tab, highlight Genre and press the Add button.)
- If you are finding that the list is too diverse (perhaps there are too many songs with different styles), you can use the File/Customize Options menu to change the Artist style setting. This lets you control how closely you want the styles to match, in addition to the overall sound. At the far left, the style will be ignored. At the far right, the style will be strongly preferred. If you set the style to be strongly preferred, you will probably only get songs by a small number of artists, or from a small number of CD's. Note that a song must either be on an album of 6 or more tracks, or the associated artist must have 6 or more songs in order for the MusicMagic Mixer to associate a style. (You can check this easily by choosing Similar Artists or Similar Albums when you right-click on an artist or an album - if this option is enabled, then the Mixer was able to create a style for that artist or album.)
- If you like a list, but want more variety, you can use the File/Customize Options menu and either move the Variety slider farther to the right or simply increase the number of tracks which will appear in the list.
- You can select multiple songs when you create a mix - this will often give you a nice variety while staying in the general mood you are after. Use SHIFT-click to select a range of songs, or CTRL-click to add a single song at a time to the set of selected songs. Note that it will take longer to create mixes if you select a lot of songs.
- A different way to make a relatively restricted playlist is to select an artist, and choose Similar Artists by right-clicking on the artist name. Choose several of the artists listed, as your mood suits, and press the Add button. The playlist will now contain all songs by all those artists.
- Final tip: If you prefer a specific shuffling algorithm you may want to shuffle your new mix before you send it to the player.
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