Smart playlists for varied, repeated listening

[Guest realmayo]

I’ve been on a bit of a listening kick the last couple of months and I’ve been very happy using a method I saw few years ago which cleverly organises a supply of your existing listening material.

 

I’ve already got loads of mp3 material, podcasts, recordings of 锵锵三人行, BBC stuff, most of which I haven’t listened to yet. I want to listen to a mixture of these. And relisten now and again: I think that’s valuable, partly because when you remember some of what’s coming up it frees up your mind to focus on trickier bits you didn’t get the first time around.

 

Before, I was faffing around too much working out what to listen to, or what to relisten to. Silly as it sounds, now that I can let the PC make all the decisions I’m actually I’m listening to far far more: I’ve got Chinese on all the time, either listening to it hard, or having it on while I cook or tidy up or whatever.

 

But I guess most people do perfectly fine without any system, and they will think what follows is crazily overengineered!

 

 

The method uses smart playlists to provide varied listening material with in-built repetition. You need to have the listening material already.

 

I wish I could find the source for this idea: it was on a blog which didn’t last very long, I think by someone called John something. He explained it much better and probably his settings were better than mine: below is basically how I remember it, but it could be quite different.

 

 

The way I have it set up, every two hours I listen will include:

 

- half the time I will be listening to new material

- most of the rest will be things I’ve heard 1 to 3 times before

- what’s left will be something I’ve heard 4 times or more

 

It doesn’t matter if you listen to the whole two hours in one go or not: the proportions will stay the same. For me, those proportions are working well (though that might change).

 

 

I tried this on iTunes before and I remember it working. Currently I use mediamonkey. Any similar programme that records playcounts and has both ordinary playlists and smart playlists should be okay.

 

‘Ordinary playlists’: you just drag mp3s into them.

‘Smart playlists’: automatically select mp3s according to the list of criteria you provide.

 

These criteria include:

- where the mp3s are (e.g. ‘give me all mp3s from these two other playlists’)

- playcount (how many times they’ve been played)

- size (the maximum number of mp3s, or maximum number of minutes, you want the list to hold)

- ordering (if you have size restrictions, how do you choose which eligible mp3s go in the list and which don’t)

 

 

Here’s my setup with five playlists:

 

Ordinary playlist called “Holding Pen”. Put suitable listening material in here.

 

Smart playlist called “0”: Criteria: mp3s from “Holding Pen” that have a playcount of zero.

But it is limited to 75 minutes. And ordered by random.

 

Smart playlist called “1-3”: Criteria: mp3s from “Holding Pen” that have a playcount of 1, 2 or 3.

But it is limited to 50 minutes. And ordered by random.

 

Smart playlist called “4+”: Criteria: mp3s from “Holding Pen” that have a playcount of 4 or more.

But it is limited to 25 minutes. And ordered by random.

 

Smart playlist called “Chinese listening”: Criteria: mp3s that are in “0” and ones that are in “1-3” and ones that are in “4+”.

No time limits. Ordered by random.

 

 

That's it. It’s the last one, “Chinese listening”, that gives you stuff to actually listen to.

 

 

The above is based on the fact that most of what I have is between 15-25 minutes long. I’m sure there are better ways of ordering everything (perhaps limiting to number of mp3s rather than limiting to length of time), but so far this is working for me.

 

Anyway, hopefully the basic idea might be useful to one or two people.

 

All I need to do now is work out how to get my phone syncing properly with my PC again: for this to work properly on my phone it needs to be able to tell the PC the updated playcount.

[mackie1402]

I really tried to push myself to listen to more Chinese throughout the day when I was working from home, but every time I put something on in the background I just got a headache. After long mornings studying I think I just needed a break from that extra listening. Maybe I was too mentally tired, maybe I was trying to decipher every thing I was listening to without realising, or maybe I didn't have a good mix of things to listen to.

 

Might have to try something similar!

[mackie1402]

I can't believe it's been over a year... but I've finally done it!

 

Just set this up. Love it already. Loaded up all of my ChinesePod dialogues and now I'm editing my dialogues from the books I've studied and will be studying. It's a nice bit of listening while I potter around the house.