Need a way to preserve songs in the list while playing

[mixxxbot]

Reported by: seemanta
Date: 2015-03-30T18:25:14Z
Status: New
Importance: Wishlist
Launchpad Issue: lp1438352
Tags: autodj

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Hello,

I am not a DJ in the regular sense and want to use mixxx for DJing Tango dances. In tango dances, there is no need to mixxx or beatmatch songs or cue music.

All that is needed is:

1. A means to play songs off of a playlist, one by one.
2. A means to preview tracks before adding them to the playlist on a separate sound hardware - mixxx already does this very nicely.
3. Good means to search and pull out songs from the library - this also works quite well.

For 1, I need a way to preserve the playlist contents. The reason for this is to help keep track of what I have played in order to decide what I will play next. Let me go in more detail. Here are some characteristics of DJing during a Tango dance party:

• We play songs in sets of 3 or 4, called a 'Tanda'.

• After each Tanda, we have a 'Cortina' which acts as a separator to indicate the end the current Tanda and beginning of the next. A Cortina is usually short, 30-40 seconds and it is music distinct from Tango (Jazz, Pop etc.) so that dancers can know that it is not meant for dancing and is only for them to either change partners or go back to sitting.

• Tango music can be of three types : Tango (4/4 time signature), Vals (3/4 time signature) or Milonga (2/4 time signature). DJs usually play: TTVcTTMcTTVcTTM...

Here each capital letter represents a Tanda with 3 or 4 songs. The small 'c' represents a Cortina. So you get the picture. Hence, TTV means 2 tango tandas followed by a Vals tanda. The 'c' means a Cortina. TTM, similarly means two Tango tandas followed by a Milonga Tanda.

I need to know what songs I have played before in order to decide what I am going to play next. This is because I want to give the dancers a smooth transition from low energy songs to high energy songs and also to maintain the TTV/TTM pattern. But when songs get knocked off from the list, it is hard to keep track of what I have played before without doing some sort of mental calculation either with the history list or the re-queue feature.

I know history/re-queue can be used, but when DJing I have too many things on my mind and I would like to avoid any sort of jumping around lists and mental gymnastics to figure out what music I have played. Just a simple list from where tracks are played one by one and where songs don't get removed is my simple requirement.

This can be achieved in mixxx if, songs from AutoDJ are not removed after they finish playing. Of course, that's one way to achieve it. There are other ways to achieve it too, I am sure. And I would like to hear from the maintainers what their thoughts are on this matter.

[mixxxbot]

Commented by: ywwg
Date: 2015-03-30T18:39:31Z

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One helpful feature, mixxx does have a checkbox next to songs that you have played during the current set. If you don't see this column, right click on the library header and tell it to show you the "played" column.

You don't get the full ordering, but at least you know what's been played already.

Adding this feature would be very tricky, but it might be a good summer project for someone.