I listen to a lot of music, but mostly I like to keep the heavy rotation to newer tunes. I think this keeps me young, forward-looking, and out of a deep nostalgia rut that can become a sucking morass that steals your imaginary soul and all of that. For instance I know some folks who listen to nothing but old songs that are sad paeans to the joys of their lost youth, and get this — they started listening to most of that yearning for lost childhood stuff wayyyyyyyy back while they were still young believe it or not. Their song list is about 75 tunes long of total melancholic bore and I don’t want to become like that. (no! I am not talking about you my friend!)

However I do get in a rare mood where I do want to think back and I do have all of those old tunes on my IPOD. I just don’t listen to them as much as most people because I played the hell out of them while DJ’ing. So some songs are not good to listen to for me no matter how great the tune, I’ve just heard it too damned much.

When I do want to listen to old stuff or things from a certain era I use a smart playlist, and here’s how you can create and tailor them in ITUNES.

First under “File” menu Select >NEW then >Smart Playlist — once the window pops up click the Plus sign a few times to create a few programmable lines, when you finish it will look something like this but the lines will be mostly blank & the same:

http://www.noblesseoblige.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Untitled-1.jpg

The first window says “artist” but it’s a drop selection window with a ton of choices — Select “YEAR” and then move right to the next window on that line. You want to start with the year before the one you want to start with so if you were making a playlist of Rock, Pop, and other music from 2000 - 2010 then after you select Year, next to it a drop down that has “is greater than” and then in the last selection window type in “1999″.

Next in the bottom line of your playlist you close your program bracket by doing the same but use “YEAR” “is less than” and put in “2011″. That brackets your decade but you aren’t done yet, you should always put in a line in that excludes “holiday” so you don’t get that Christmas tune playing in June at minimum…” To do that Select “Genre” to exclude “Holiday” by using “is not”, on those other lines you can also exclude any other genres or things you don’t like, look at those drop downs and be creative in narrowing the playlist - you can always add more lines in the script by hitting the “+”, and once you are all done you use the “-” sign to eliminate any extra lines. Click on “Live Updating” so it grabs any new songs you add that might fit the criteria and then hit save, and name it something specific like 2000-2010 or “the lost decade” or whatever. Bam! you done..

Cross posted at Noblesse Oblige: How to Create and Tailor a Smart Playlist in ITUNES