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[Dan Da Man]

OK, this is what I want to do.

All year I have a "Work Mix" which is unordered and contains 1200+ songs that I play on my iPod randomly during work.  Also, every song that has to do with Christmas is in a "Christmas" genre in my library (about 175 songs).  None of them are in the "Work Mix".

Just playing the Christmas genre randomly is a bit too much Christmas for me, especially since there's about 15 versions of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" in my Christmas genre.

So, could I put together a smartlist that has all the Christmas tracks plus 300 or so random tracks from my "Work Mix"?  That way, every couple songs would be Christmas, not every single one.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

Dan "da Man"

[Phydeaux]

I'm writing this blind (ie: not with my eyes closed, but away from my PC with  MC!). I think that you will have to have three separate smartlists.

1) <your definition for work songs> and a limit to 300 tracks, you might have to add a random sort modifier to prevent the same tracks being in the list each time.

2) [Genre]=[Christmas]

3) [Playlist]="Christmas","Work" ~sort=[Random]

The reason for having the three separate playlists and not writing something like:

((<work def>) or ([Genre]=[Christmas])) ~sort=[Random] <tracks>=300

(yes, my syntax is wrong, but I use wizards, so shoot me!)

is that MC will then kill some of your Christmas songs and if you have a lot of work songs, you may get proportionately very few Christmas ones.

The next temptation is to write

((<work def> <tracks>=300) or ([Genre]=[Christmas])) ~sort=[Random]

but the problem there is that MC doesn't know how to "nest" the modifiers and so this line is exactly equivalent to the first.

There are minor things in that (in theory) the playlist version and my second attempt at a single playlist will give you 300 tracks + your christmas music, whereas the first attempt at a single playlist will only give you 300 tracks (including Christmas... but then you can always adjust it manually, can't you?).

I wish the MC dev team would look at this a little more seriously becuase it pi.... really annoys me. So much so that I have a playlist group simply for "Smartlist Helpers" so that they don't clutter everything else...

Hope this helps.

P.

[Phydeaux]

Actually, you only need two smartlists:

1) <work def> <tracks>=300

2) [Playlist]="Work Stuff" or [Genre]=[Christmas]

Hope this helps!

P.

[Warlock]

but the problem there is that MC doesn't know how to "nest" the modifiers and so this line is exactly equivalent to the first.

I'd like to see "nesting" added as well.