A quick way to tune your music for any occasion

So: your PC’s set up, your music’s copied across, you’ve got decent speakers and an MP3 player for when you’re on the move. But you want more. You want to create playlists at a certain speed to match with your activities, you want to make sure all that track information you’ve downloaded is correct, and you want to be able to find all the songs in your favourite specialist genre of 1980s party tunes.

Well, it’s easier than you might think. With Media Player 11 on Windows Vista you have more control than ever over your music. For example, you can slow down or speed up a song’s tempo. If you do this for multiple songs, put them in a playlist, and then synch them to a portable music device, you could create the ultimate workout playlist. Imagine, every song in your playlist playing at the same speed as your jogging!

You can also edit the album title, artist, genre, year, and song titles. This is important when you have multiple versions of a song or when you deem the information retrieved from the internet incorrect or incomplete. It’s possible to rate songs as well and even add your own information about the artist, type the lyrics, add pictures you’ve found on the web, and include your own comments. Imagine taking pictures at a concert, adding them to the library, and then adding comments about your experience!

Full speed ahead

You can change the playback speed of any song by using the Play Speed settings under Enhancement on the Now Playing tab. You might want to increase how fast a song plays to make the ultimate workout song as mentioned earlier, or slow it down to learn a guitar riff. Changing the speed doesn’t change the key of the song as it did with record players, which means that slowing down a song won’t make it any lower and speeding it up won’t make it sound like the Chipmunks!

To change the playback speed of any song, follow these steps:

• In Media Player 11, click on the Library tab.
• Select a song to play.
• Click the Now Playing tab, select Enhancements, then click on Play speed settings.
• Move the slider left to slow the song down or to the right to speed it up. You can also click Slow, Normal, or Fast.

All change please

You can edit just about anything in Media Player 11. To find out whether something is editable, right-click it, and look for the word Edit. It may be a stand-alone command, or may appear within a menu. If it’s there, click it and the editable text will turn blue (meaning it’s highlighted and selected), then all you have to do is replace what’s there.

It’s all in the detail

To further enhance your music library you can add pictures, lyrics, and comments. You can achieve all this by right-clicking a song and selecting Advanced Tag Editor. You won’t see the Advanced Tag Editor command when clicking on album details, only when you select the song title.

The Advanced Tag Editor

There are five key areas you can edit using the Advanced Tag Editor...

Track info

Type in as much information as you have about the track: there are fields for title, subtitle, track number, beats per minute, album name, original album name, set, and subgenre. Select options from the drop-down lists for genre, mood, key, and language to create advanced tag entries for each of these items.

If you don’t see what you want in the drop-down list, it’s easy to add your own option. For example, if an album in your library is rated as Rock when you think it should be categorized as Party Tunes, you can make that change in the Advanced Tag Editor dialogue box. After you’ve done that, when you select or create a playlist based on what you deem Party Tunes, that album will be included and you can party away to your heart’s content!

Artist info

Type in the album information for artist, lyricist, album artist, original lyricist, conductor, composer, and original artist. Click Web sites to add the musician’s web address.

Lyrics

Type in song lyrics or click Synchronized lyrics to add them based on the position in the song. You can click the Help button in the Synchronized lyrics dialogue box to see how to get started.

Pictures

Click Add, then browse to the picture you want to include. Scan in album covers, or add your concert photos for a really personal touch.

Comments

Type your comments into the text box. You can add as much or as little information as you like. The more you add and more precise you are, the more exact your playlists will be – it’s a great chance to make notes on just how a track makes you feel, and your favourite memories of it.

Genre

In the Track Info tab, you have the option to pick a genre for the song. You’ll see that Party Tunes (our favourite) is not a default genre, and is not listed. However, you can type in any genre you like and save your changes, and it will be added to the list.