MusicMaster Blog

Getting More out of your Clocks

By Chris Hulsether

In today’s world, Program Directors and Music Directors wear so many hats that they want to be able to make changes and decisions as quickly as possible when it comes to music scheduling strategy. This is why MusicMaster is the best music scheduler in the world, because we have the flexibility to give you what you want to make the best choices possible. Let’s discuss some of those choices that revolve around your clocks.

I am a big fan of colors with my MusicMaster. It allows me to quickly see what my important categories or elements are in a clock. When I look at a clock or the pie chart the important elements (Music) stick out. I can now make better decisions when I build my clocks. I like to have my Music Categories to be colorful and my Imaging (Sweepers and Jingles) to be different, less colorful, to let my music categories pop. This gives me a better visual of what is happening in my hour.

You have been able to change the colors in each category for a while but did you know you can create color themes?

You have the ability to color all of your categories at once with different colors. You can color just your Music Categories or just your Non-Music Categories or have one theme for Music and another theme for the Non-Music.

You can get to the Category Editor a couple of ways. You can go to Dataset, Library and Categories or in your InfoBar right click on the Categories tab and select Category Editor from the context menu.

Once you have the Category Editor up, click on the Colors button.

Choose from one of the many different Color Palettes, then check the boxes you want the Color Palette to apply to. This is where you can have the Music Categories as one theme and the Non-music a different theme or have all categories, Music and Non-Music all share the same theme. Click OK and your categories will save with that color theme.

Once you have done this you will really see how your categories will pop in your clocks.

When you look at the Pie View (Click the small Pie Chart Icon to view this) You can see that color theme when you view the full hour.

Let’s take it one more step, if you want to label your categories within your Pie Chart, you can add the Category Code to see what category plays in each spot on the pie chart.

To add the Category Code go to Tools, Options, Additional Properties. Find the clocks section and the PieClockLabels. Change the 0 to a 1, click apply and OK. Reopen your clock.

Stay in Tools, Options, Additional Properties and also select Display Colors. Here you will be able color the specific clock element. In the above pie view clock display notice that the inner circle is blue on many elements. This is where you set that. You can set all the Music to one color (like I did here with blue) or even set specific clock elements.

Now that you have your colors set, here are a few more options in Clocks that you may find helpful.

When you are building clocks, you may know about the Category Usage tab and how it can help you count how many categories you have set up in that clock. If you use Migrating positions the Migrating tab has the Migrating Wizard to help you use the Migrating elements work within your clock. Learn more about that feature in this blog https://musicmaster.com/?p=8220

One more tab you can checkout is the Element Usage Tab. This lets you quickly view how many Fixed, Forced, Migrating, etc. elements you have in your clock. This will also list how many lognotes and time markers you have. You will also see the estimated time that is expected to fill in the hour, allowing you can see if the hour has enough music to fill the hour and to make sure you don’t over schedule the hour.

From adjusting your colors to using the additional tabs, there is much you can do in Clocks to make things easy to understand and help you pinpoint the information you need.

If you have questions about these functions in your Clocks, please contact your MusicMaster Scheduling Consultant.