MusicMaster Blog

By Marianne Burkett

If you have a “Memo” field type in your database, consider it’s uses. You can import or type in an unlimited number of characters – so whether you want to import promo/PSA copy or import lyrics from a Notepad or ASC type document, the memo field can accommodate. You can check your field map to see if a Memo field is available in your database. Dataset/Library/Fields If you’ve got the field, once populated it can also be added to your paper log.

If you haven’t had the opportunity (or the need) to utilize the mass changer, here is a quick overview. The Mass Changer utility is available in Library Maintenance by right clicking on the header row in the QuickEditor or in the field column of the Song Card. If the field does not allow mass changes, the option will not appear. These fields include:

Add Date, Category, Category Plays, Dayparting, Library Plays, Non-Music, Packet, Performance, and Song ID.

The Mass Changer will default to the field you clicked on originally, but you will be able to select any available field by selecting the Target Field.

When you have selected a field to change, you can select from the available mass change Operations. The type of operations available will change depending upon whether you are in a keyword, attribute or text field.

Options available to you (again depending on field type) include:

Convert to UPPER, lower, mixed case case.
Add, remove and assign specific keyword.
Clear field contents.
Extract sub-string and delimited sub-strings.
Assign sequential values.
Search and Replace

Plus several more!

There is also a separate mass changer available for keywords.

Please remember to back up your data before you utilize this tool, and don’t hesitate to contact us if we can assist in advising on the best option for your project.

by Paul Ziino

Did you know you can open multiple screens within your database at the same time, and then tile them vertically or horizontally? For example, open one of your categories. Leave it open, now open the schedule editor. Now click on Window and Tile Vertical…the two screens are now next to one another. You can click the grey pointer for an item in the library, then drag it across to your schedule editor and drop the song into the log! This can come in handy when you're scheduling a countdown show or other feature.

By Drew Bennett

Did you know that choosing Ctrl-C on an element and then scrolling down and choosing Ctrl-C on another element shows you the amount of time between the two? It’s a great little tool to know when you need to time out pieces of the log or segments ramping up to a specific element or event.

By Drew Bennett

You schedule music a lot. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be using such a powerful piece of software, right? So, it stands to reason you would want to customize the software any way you can to make life easier or maybe just to brighten things up a bit and make time spent scheduling music that much more enjoyable. In the old days, you were forced to go with a predetermined color scheme or worse, no color scheme at all. With MusicMaster for Windows, you are not forced to use a set group of colors or color schemes in the software. You really can set custom colors and layouts in various sections of the software to make things more appealing to you.

Categories is a great place to start when you are building a database and setting category colors can help organize your categories better. To change the color of a category listed in the info bar, right click on the category and choose, Properties. You can also reach category properties from the main menu by choosing Dataset, Library, Categories and then double clicking a category. When you reach the category properties screen you will notice the word, “Sample,” at the bottom of the screen. Double clicking that opens a color grid and this is where you can set the Foreground color (text) and the Background color of the category.

You can even change the way your songs look within your categories and within the library maintenance screen. In library maintenance, choose the “Show/Hide Fields” icon (eighth icon from the right.) The Edit Grid Layout screen appears and this is where you can change the foreground and background color of the song cards in a category. Songs in music categories can have different colors applied than songs in non-music categories. Here, you can also change the color or songs that you have marked within the database.

Editing the grid layout can also be done in the Schedule Editor. In the Schedule Editor, the Modify Editor Layout is the 5th icon from the right. When you click it, the Edit Grid Layout screen appears. On the right side of this screen you can change the colors for anything from Hour Markers in the log, to Lognotes, or even Stopsets. The color of Unscheduled Positions can also be changed here as well as how music and non-music looks within the Schedule Editor. Note: When creating or modifying layouts in either Library Maintenance or the Schedule Editor, don’t forget to save your layout so you can come back to it later.

Highlight Filters in the Schedule Editor are a great way to add a little color to songs that meet a certain criteria defined by you. The 12th icon from the left in the Schedule Editor is called Highlight Filters. Here, you can set a value to a filter using the dropdown boxes in the Highlight Filters screen. You can also set a color to be displayed in the Schedule Editor when that criterion is met. Use the Modify Editor Layout icon to add these Highlight Filters to the Schedule Editor layout.

From the main menu, head to Tools, Options, Display Colors. Here, you can customize the colors of Clocks, History, Library and Schedule element types. For instance, changing the color of your weekends in the History Graph can help you to more easily identify weekend spins when you are editing a day. You might also want to change the color of element types in the pie chart tab of the Clock Editor.

You can also change the color of the Main Window Wallpaper you see when you open the software. To do that, choose Tools, Options, Dataset Identification. Find the Main Windows Wallpaper section and change the color that displays when you open the software.

Changing the colors around in various sections of the software can really be helpful when you use it as much as you do. It can be a difference maker in many cases so take the time to find your custom color settings in MusicMaster. It makes for happier scheduling and a better music log!

by Paul Ziino

When you need to make a copy of a clock, simply go to Dataset/Clocks/Format Clocks. Highlight the clock you wish to copy, then click the Copy button on the right. Now you’ll assign a new clock code and description to the copy. Don’t know what code is available? Just type "??" and press Enter–MusicMaster will assign a code for you.

The trick here is to highlight the clock to be copied. The check box to the left of each clock is used for mass printing, deleting, and exporting. You’ll notice that if you check one clock and then click Copy, MusicMaster will do so for whatever clock is highlighted–generally that’s the first clock in your list.

by Paul Ziino

Dataset/Schedule/QuickView. Use this to see where you have unscheduled positions lingering in your logs. Green means no unscheduled items, yellow with a number indicates how many unscheduled items occur in that hour. Double-click on it, and MusicMaster takes you to that hour in your schedule editor so you can edit, fill, or delete that position. There's also a shortcut for Schedule QuickView in the Schedule Editor–it's seventh from the right between Load Editor Layout and Vicinity Viewer.

By Drew Bennett

You can take a look at every decision MusicMaster made when it scheduled your last session. It’s called the Thinking Process and to turn it on, you will head to Dataset, Scheduler, Automatic Scheduler, Options and choose “Save Thinking Process to Disk.” Once you’ve scheduled your session, find the Thinking Process button in the Recap Report by choosing Dataset, Schedule, Recap Report. You can also find Thinking_Process.txt in the directory with your database file. Inside, you will see a log of every decision MusicMaster made when it scheduled the last session. It’s a great way to identify problems during the scheduling session. Maybe you have several unscheduled positions but no clue as to why they happened. The Thinking Process will show you what rules passed and failed for that position making it much easier to identify a problem. Happy scheduling!

Marianne Burkett

Need to make a change across all clocks to the text of a specific lognote? Fastest way to do this is in DATASET-CLOCKS-LOGNOTE TEXT. (more…)

I had a client email the question this morning: Is there a Core Artist report in MusicMaster for Windows? Depending on your perspective, there are a few ways to generate that report with a few simple clicks. If you’d like to have the report depend on frequency of plays – use the History Browser’s Artist rank and spins report (Dataset/Analysis/History Browser). If you’d like the report to depend on number of Titles each artist has – use your Library Analysis report on the artist field. Just bring up your Active Music Categories group and right click on the artist field and select “Library Analysis”. This will give you an instant report from top to bottom of the Artists with the most to least songs.