Quick Start

Contents

Introduction To Your MusicDB Quick Start Opening A Database Searching By Song Searching By Album Creating A New Album Creating and Maintaining Albums Searching The Database Printing Reports Maintaining Your Personal Collection Designing Reports Importing Albums Miscellaneous

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Opening A Database 

Either click on the Open database button in the toolbar or select Open ... from the File menu.  A File requestor will open that shows the databases in the default database folder.  Click on a database (.dbk) then click on the Select button.

Searching By Song 

To open the Album/Song Search window click on the Search button in the toolbar or select Album/Song Search from the Views menu.  When the window opens, select an artist from the artist drop-down box or click on the By Song radio button.  Immediately, a list of songs will appear in the explorer list to the left of the window.  To view the details for any song, click on any song title and the details will be shown in the right portion of the window.

Figure 1. Song details

The table at the bottom shows all albums that contain the selected song.  To view the details of the album, highlight an album in the table, then click on the More info button in the table navigator.  A second window will open showing the details of that album.

Figure 2. Album detail from song search

There are two buttons on this window, Notes and Image.  If the Notes button is active, then clicking on it will open another window displaying the notes.  The same is true for the Image button, except it will open a window displaying the album cover image.

Searching By Album 

The steps are the same in an album search except the By Album button is clicked.  A list of all albums for the selected artist is displayed in the explorer.  Click on any album title and the album details are displayed in the right portion of the window.

Figure 3. Album details

The table at the bottom of the album detail displays all songs contained in the album.  Highlight any song name, then click the More info button to show the song details as described above.

Figure 4. Song detail from album search window

Creating A New Album 

Click the Album Maintenance button or select Album Maintenance from the Views Menu.  The Add album button is inactive until a performer is selected in the Artist drop-down box.   Once the performer is selected, click the Add album button and the right side of the window displays the Album Info tab with defaults assigned.

Figure 5. Song detail from album search window

Entering Album Info

Enter the appropriate information in the drop-down boxes or text boxes.  All drop-down boxes are auto-fill and will locate the first matching item as you type.  Often only the first 2-3 characters need to be typed to locate a matching item.  If a match can't be located, click the Add button to the right the drop-down box.  This will open a window where you can enter the appropriate information.

Figure 6. Typical data entry window

Enter the information in the proper text box and press enter to advance to the next text box.  Proper case naming is applied to all information entered in the text boxes.  For instance Your song, your song, and YOUR SONG will all be converted to Your Song.  When done with the Album Info tab, click the Tracks tab to display the view for entering the album song tracks.

Entering Song Tracks

The Tracks view has the familiar drop-down boxes and text boxes for entering the song track information.  The notable exception is the track table at the bottom of the view.  

Figure 6. Add album tracks view

Before a song can be added, an empty row must be added to the track table.  If the song is one you know is not in the database, click the Add new song button to the right of the Song Name drop-down box.  This will insert automatically add an empty row into the table.  Otherwise, click the Add row button in the table navigator.  It is often wise to initially add several empty rows at the start.  They can easily be deleted by clicking the Delete row button in the table navigator.  Once you have all the tracks entered, you may discover that some of the songs are not in the proper order.  To move a song up in the table, click the Move row up button in the table navigator.  To move a song down in the table, click the Move row down button in the table navigator.

Correcting Side-Track Information

As you enter songs, the track numbers are automatically sequenced.  However, they may be wrong.  The recommended last step is to completely re-sequence the tracks.  First, click the Re-sequence all tracks button.  This resets the side to 1 for all tracks and numbers the tracks consecutively starting at 1.  If there is only one side, Cd for instance, then you are done.  Otherwise, highlight the song for the start of side 2.  Click into the Side text box and press enter.  The track numbers starting from the selected song and below are re-numbered. again starting at 1.  Repeat this process for all additional sides.

At this point you are done.  Clicking another song in the explorer or closing the window will save the data.  You never have to remember to click a save button.

See the Creating and Maintaining Albums section of the documentation for more details. There you will find other ways to add song tracks (copying tracks from an existing album and importing from text files) and other useful tips.

Good luck and happy album creation !!!!

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