Song-learning playlist!

December 5, 2011 9:27 PM

I am trying to learn a couple of songs really well for an upcoming drag performance. Is there any way to make either itunes or grooveshark(or other online music services) make these songs come up unreasonably often while shuffling through a larger playlist?

Ideally, it would be great if I could hear my whole library at random but have every 5th track or so be one of these two songs. I want to hear them a lot while I'm working/studying, but I don't want to go out of my mind from hearing them on repeat. Is this completely impossible to do without manually inserting them a bunch of times into a giant playlist?

posted by rosken to Technology (3 answers total)

Best answer: If you add it many times to a playlist then it will come up more often.
Sometimes it will pay attention to the rating of songs too and
play songs you rate highly slightly more often than others.
posted by digividal at 9:36 PM on December 5, 2011

Response by poster: Uhg. And I can obviously just shuffle the playlist itself without inserting them every 5 songs. Man, I feel like an idiot right now. Thank you! (<-not sarcastically)
posted by rosken at 9:41 PM on December 5, 2011

The sure-fire but overly complicated way to do this in iTunes would be to have a succession of smart playlists feeding into a final playlist you listen to.

Pop the two songs into a playlist by themselves, call it "x-STL" (songs to learn; the X drops it to the bottom of your playlists to get it out of the way).

Then create a smart playlist to rotate the two songs: Playlist IS x-STL, limit to 1 song, selected by least recently played, live updating checked. Call that one "x-STLr".

Then create a smart playlist to grab four songs from your library. You can use whatever criteria you want here, or none if you really want to randomly select from your entire library. Limit to 4 songs, selected by random, live updating checked. Call it "x-ALL".

Then create the final playlist (call it whatever you want -- this is the one you'll listen to): Match ANY of the following rules, Playlist IS x-STLr, Playlist IS x-ALL, live updating checked.

You should wind up with a playlist containing four random songs from your library, and one of the selected songs. As you play a library song, it'll drop out and be replaced with another random one at the end of the list. After you play a selected song, it'll drop out and be replaced by the other selected song.

If you want to learn more songs you can add them to x-STL. If you want to increase or decrease the number of songs between your selected songs, you can just increase or decrease the limit of four in x-ALL.

Smart playlists = awesome.
posted by brentajones at 11:12 PM on December 5, 2011 [2 favorites]