I've been spinning since 1990 and have been through all sorts of genres. However for majority of the time I have been heavily into Drum n Bass and Chicago House and those are my main stay of music. However I like all music which is outside mainstream and pop. I've also produced for many years on and off since 1996. Recently since late 2008 I have created a record label called Mixtura Records with my partner in crime Smokingroove. www.mixturarecords.com www.pazngroove.com However my career is not producing or DJing. I have no patience for the professional DJ world as I make much more money as a Technical Director for Flip Media which is the largest online interactive agency in the Middle East. I currently reside in Dubai with my wife Natasha, although we hail from Toronto, Canada and have also lived in Amsterdam, NL for 8 years before progressing to the hot arid concrete jungle of Dubai.

Thu 28 Feb 08 @ 9:10 am

i think the best advice is to first think and analyze how you want to recall your music. how do you spin? how do you arrange your sets? and most imporatntly what aspects do you remember about music?

some people remember years and labels and whatnot. i organize my music by feeling, so i can move up, down and laterally in my set based on the mood.

any kind of organization scheme is dependant on the selected axiom. the success of that organization structure is how long that axiom works until broken.

to explan further: an axiom in my case is mood. I start with the type: house. subfolders are deep, funky, jazzy, tech, etc. but then in each of those i repeat the same folders. for instance, i have some deep house that is quite techy so its in House > Deep > Tech as opposed to a Funky track which is more upbeat in House > Funk > Up

it works for me becuase i have 1000s of a very similar genre. i dont use or believe in playlist because every time you spin, you need to make up the set based on too many factors to just repeat something done before.

so that is the axiom. i also demonstrated how i expand. for instance, my house > funk folder grew to about 300 before it became too unweildy to find anything. so i spawned the subfolders which are similar in other (i had done in Deep first because i have several hundred more tracks there). so the axiomatic approach is still the same but it allows me to expand.

when you start to mix and match axioms, the house of cards falls down. it becomes difficult to find something.

so whatever you do, think about 'how you will use it' before deciding how it will work. once you figure out how you want to recall tracks, build a solid system and stick with it.

and remember the last point. rework in anything is always more time consuming than doing it right the first time. dropping 2000 tracks in one folder and then deciding to organize is worse than doing 30 everytime your purchase.