Singer Rotation

[Dmarti29]

Reading the forum, I noted that some are struggling to maintain a rotation. There was a SND button that some used to use, gone in 4.06, and keeping the songs was a suggested solution.

I did the following and it works great:

First, when I get my singers I add their names to a paper list numbered from 1-xx, such as 1 marie, 2 dave, etc. When I add their song, I enter their name with the number as a prefix. That way when the show display shows the next singers, they see the number and their name as well as the song they are going to sing.

Then, I took a song, number 101 as it turns our in my song book, and edited the title from Angel Eyes to "Your Personal CD-G". I did this because I do get a lot of singers who have their own discs. Those singers know to bring their cd with them.

When a singer who uses my msuic, sees his or her name with that title, they generally remember to bring up a slip.

I allow all songs to delete after play to keep my screen clear, and to be certain I keep everyone in the rotation, I keep all singers on the screen using their numbered name and "you personal cd" as the title. As the singer sings, I keep moving the "dummy" song down to the next rotation section.

Works great and never a doubt about the rotation.

[Dmarti29]

Can anyone tell me how they deal with Windows changing drive letters of an external hard drive? I know the reasons it happens and I know the suggested solution is to always use the same usb port, but even using the same port, the drive letter can change. Such as when I plug in both my external hard drive and my external plextor cd drive. Even plugging in a flash drive can cause the drive letter to change for my hard drive.

When this happens, all my playlists will not play. They all reference, internally in the file, the drive letter when the list was created. Once the drive letter changes, the playlist is no longer valid.

Being somewhat comuter literate, I have created two playist, one for drive "g" and the other for drive "h", in my case. That way should the drive letter change I still have playlists that work, but its a real pain to maintain.

Same is true with playlists I have that contain mp3 audio music, that I use for DJ shows without karaoke. I have to go into windows edit in DOS, open the files (binary open) and replace the drive letters then save as the other dirve directory name.

Any suggestions?

[ddouglass]

You don't say whether you are using XP or Vista. For XP, go to the Control Panel, open the Administrative Tools, then open Computer Management. Down the left column find and click on Disk Management (with the external plugged in.) Right click on the drive then click on Change Drive Letter and Path. There you can set it permanently to H (so the CD drive won't change it) and that should take care of it. Any time you plug an external CD or flash drive in it will bump any external hard drives down the list because in Microsoft's infinite wisdom they have a higher priority.....thanks Bill!!

[swany]

First I put up my songs by singers and cluster them together, I write down the rotation on a small pad. This is handy for keeping records of gigs also. Lot of my singers have helpers sing with them. I used to have a problem with that, I now say hey the more the merrier, but each person selects one song each rotation, I don't care if they have three friends that sing every song with them, I call only one name it is up to them to call helpers. When I got a complaint on this (Man and Wife duets) I simply showed them I put her name first on the next song and they both sang in each rotation. I put their songs up together, in a list that lines up with rotation, ask what one they want to sing each time I call them up.

Now the Drive letter problem.

Yeah plugging it in the same port helps, this does too, plug it in first, the pc will name it with the next available drive letter. Hopefully you done this when you built your database. If not, plug it in boot it up, open hoster and rebuild the data base. Just a pecking order so to speak.

If you plug in a USB flash drive first then the external the flash drive will have that letter. This in itself can be a pain as the U3 system for flash drives and Vista will name the U3 as one drive and the flash drive as another. Found that out when one of my DJs read a KMA file from a flash drive, that was fun. Song came up in the database but was not on the hard drive.