# How do you set up your classical mp3 collection?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I'm sure I'm not the only one frustrated at the lack of options for those of us who want to listen to classical music on shuffle, but there does seem to be a couple of fixes in iTunes, either to add groupings, or to join tracks, and in my case groupings are ok, but only work in iTunes unless you have an app like the one that I found on the app store a few years ago, but is no longer sold, and likely won't work forever since there's no more updates of the product. Joining tracks means that you will never be able to listen to a separate movement of a work again, with some things that is ok. So I was wondering, anyone found a decent solution to the problem of having many tracks for the same work of music, sometimes spanning multiple cds?


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

I am not sure I understood your problem. 
If you want to listen to a whole 20+ min concerto or symphony, what's the use of using shuffle?


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## Guest (Oct 31, 2014)

In the new iTunes I have a manual playlist called "Now Playing" which I use to manage what's playing at the moment. I have to manually add and remove tracks, but it works well enough.

I use the "Grouping" field to record the type of music, like "Violin Sonata".


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I just label by composer and put them in categories like Orchestral, Chamber, Opera, and so on. I've never done shuffle, though. So every time a piece plays I think "yes, that is precisely what I just clicked on!"


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Foobar2000 is an easy to use freeware that can join mp3's into one combined mp3 file. E.g. the separate movements of larger works.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Stavrogin said:


> I am not sure I understood your problem.
> If you want to listen to a whole 20+ min concerto or symphony, what's the use of using shuffle?


Think of it this way, what I wish to do, and have found various work arounds for this along the way, nothing has been perfect, but: Lets say you want to go on a walk, and don't want to spend the time going through hundreds of works, looking for that perfect one, simply click shuffle, and you can hear a whole Bach partita, followed by the whole of Bruckner's 3rd Symphony, or maybe a Rodrigo concerto, kind of like how it is done on NPR's classical radio stations, but since it's yours you can skip what you don't want to hear.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Probably the easiest way to do this is to *shuffle by album* (assuming you are using an ipod or player with similar function). That would mean making a double album of Bach partitas into 6 separate albums, each work would have to be an album.

Personally I don't shuffle because of the limitations and I don't tend to like listening to individual movements anyway. At one time I had my popular music on a separate drive to classical so I could exclude a whole drive from shuffle but now they are sharing space and it is no longer an option.


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