Section 42. Provide Customized Background Music with Party Shuffle

42. Provide Customized Background Music with Party Shuffle

Before You Begin	See Also
Import a Music CD into iTunes	Create Crossfades Between Songs
Find and Play Music in iTunes	AutoFill Your iPod Shuffle or iTunes Phone System
	AirTunes: Connect iTunes to a Stereo with AirPort Express

iTunes and a well-stocked Library are perfect for providing the background music at a party, particularly if you use an AirPort Express base station to broadcast your music wirelessly to your living room's big stereo system. (See AirTunes: Connect iTunes to a Stereo System with AirPort Express.)

However, you don't want to spend time putting together a manual playlist for an hours-long party, or trust the automatic ordering of a Smart Playlist. In fact, you might want to be sure that certain songs show up at a certain time of the evening, or that certain pairs of songs flow into each other when the mood is just right. This need is answered by the Party Shuffle feature, which is like a specialized, dynamic playlist that you can edit on the fly. Party Shuffle takes songs at random from a specified source (for instance, a playlist or a Smart Playlist of your choice), shows you a certain number of upcoming songs and the last few songs it's played, and gives you the opportunity to fine-tune the random upcoming choices at any time by deleting selections, rearranging them, and adding new ones from the Library. You can micromanage the Party Shuffle playlist during the party to make sure that it chooses all the right music, or leave it alone to pick its own random selections. It's up to you to be the perfect host by orchestrating the ideal musical atmosphere.

Note

You can see a maximum of 100 upcoming songs in the Party Shuffle playlist, so that's the extent to which you can engineer the list before the party begins. Party Shuffle is intended to work from automatic random selections as it goes, but it gives you the option to change selections that are soon to be played.

Provide Customized Background Music with Party Shuffle

Select the Party Shuffle Source

Click Party Shuffle in the Source pane of the iTunes window. A random selection of 15 upcoming songs, randomly chosen from your Library, is displayed in the track listing, with a shiny blue selection bar indicating the first song in the list.

Choose a Source Playlist

The first order of business is to pick the Source from which the music is going to come. You might want to pick a Smart Playlist that's designed to filter only the best songs of a certain genre, such as Reggae songs rated three stars or higher. See Create a Smart Playlist for more information on creating such a playlist.

Tip

Click the Refresh button in the upper-right corner of the window to discard the current list of upcoming songs and grab a fresh random lineup of songs from the selected source. Keep clicking until you're fairly satisfied with the list of upcoming tracks.

Choose to Weight Song Selections by Rating

If the Play higher rated songs more often check box is enabled, Party Shuffle gives a higher "weight" to songs with more stars when it's making its random selectionsfor example, a song rated five stars is five times as likely to appear in the list as a song with one star. Disable this check box if you want to give all your songs an equal chance of being heard, regardless of their rating.

Configure Song Display Options

Use the drop-down menus to configure how many recently played and upcoming songs are shown. You can choose to show up to 100 of either one. If you show the maximum number of recently played songs, you can relive the evening after it's over by perusing the list of songs that iTunes played during the course of the party.

Organize Upcoming Songs While Playing

Click Play to begin playing songs from the Party Shuffle list. As the current song plays, you have plenty of time to fine-tune the upcoming music selection. Select a song and press Delete or Del to remove it from the list. (This action doesn't delete it from the Library.) Click and drag songs into a more appropriate order, just as you would in a regular playlist, to make sure that songs flow naturally into each other. Add new songs to the list by selecting the Library option, navigating to the songs in question, and dragging them to the Party Shuffle entry in the Source pane.

Tip

To really impress your guests, be sure to turn on the crossfade effect (see Create Crossfades Between Songs) and the full-screen Visualizer ( Use the iTunes Visualizer).

With these options at your disposal, you can be sure that you'll have the perfect musical backdrop for your event. Just don't get so carried away with it that you forget to serve hors d'oeuvres!