Smoother 'mixing' from iTunes

Sometimes I'm DJing at a party for the night and I just can't be assed to carry on mixing properly. This might be because I want to be a bit more sociable, because I'm a bit the worst for wear or just down to plain laziness.

A few handy playlists in iTunes are a big help when this happens but iTunes is massivley clunky when it comes to switching from one track to another, especially if one tune's not right after the other, or in another playlist.

This is where a couple of handy iTunes scripts come in their own. Don't be affraid, it's easy to do, there's no programming involved and it should take ten or twenty minutes to do.

The best place to look for scripts is undoubtedly Dougscripts.com. It's worth having a look round this site. There's all sorts of useful stuff there, I must have grabbed twenty or so. From a script downloaded from there called "Play Selected Track Next" I made two new scripts called 10 Sec Fade Then Next Track and 10 Sec Fade Then Selected Track. They do exactly what they say on the tins and once downloaded and unzipped you should place these in the folder ~home/Library/iTunes/Scripts, if it doesn't exist then create it. The scripts will be available from the Scripts menu when you restart iTunes.

You can go one step further and assign them to function keys by using System Preferences/Keyboard and Mouse/Keyboard Shortcuts. Simply add a couple of entries to the list, but be sure you get the spelling absolutely spot on or it won't work. Use the help button for full instructions on how to do this - Apple's Help heading for this is "Creating keyboard shortcuts for applications".

I know it's not mixing but it does make transitions a lot smoother and most people don't notice by the time I get round to doing it anyway.

You may need to fully retstart your machine to make this work. It's worth it though.

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