| It won't be long until you have a large Library with many kinds of music in it. In fact, you are likely to have so much music in the Library that you won't be able to find songs you are interested in just by scrolling up and down the screen. In this section, you'll learn how to find music in your Library, first by browsing and then by searching. Browsing in the Library You've already seen the Browser a couple of times. Now it is time to put it to work: 1. | Select Library on the Source list. tip | If you don't see the Genre column in the Browser, open the General pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box and check the Show genre when browsing check box. |
| 2. | If the Browser isn't showing, click the Action button, which is now labeled Browse (it looks like an eye). The Browser will appear (see Figure 16.10). The Browser has three columns: Genre, Artist, and Album. The columns start on the left with the most general category, Genre, and end on the right with the most specific category, which is Album. Figure 16.10. The Browser offers a good way to find songs in your Library.
The contents of the "path" selected in the Browser are shown in the Content pane that now occupies the bottom part of the right side of the window. At the top of each column is the All option, which shows all the contents of that category. For example, when All is selected in the Genre column, you will see the contents of all the genres for which you have music in the Library. In Figure 16.10, you can see that I have selected All in the Genre column, Phil Keaggy in the Artist column, and Acoustic Sketches in the Albums column. This causes the Content pane to show all the tracks of album titled Acoustic Sketches by Phil Keaggy in the Content pane. At the bottom of the screen, you will see Source Information for the selected source. Again, in Figure 16.10, you can see that the 19 songs shown in the Content pane will play for 1 hour and consume 61.6MB of disk space. tip | You can also open and close the Browser by selecting Edit, Show Browser or Edit, Hide Browser. Pressing Ctrl+B (Windows) or -B (Mac) also works. |
| 3. | To start browsing your Library, select the genre in which you are interested by clicking it. When you do so, the categories in the other two columns are scoped down to include only the artists and albums that are part of that genre (see Figure 16.11, which shows the Jazz genre in my Library). Similarly, the Content pane now includes only jazz music. Notice in Figure 16.11 that the Source Information has been updated, too. It now shows that I can listen to one day of jazz before I run out of music. Figure 16.11. Because Jazz is selected in the Genre column, the Artist and Album columns and Content pane contain only the jazz that is in my Library.
| 4. | To further limit the browse, click an artist in which you are interested in the Artist column. The Album column will be scoped down to show only those albums for the artist selected in the Artist column (see Figure 16.12). Also, the Content pane will show the songs on the albums listed in the Album column. Figure 16.12. Now I am browsing all my music in the Jazz genre that is performed by Kenny G.
| 5. | To get down to the most narrow browse possible, select the album in which you are interested in the Album column. The Content pane will now show the songs on the selected album. | 6. | When you have selected the genre, artist, and album categories in which you are interested, you can scroll in the Content pane to see all the songs included in the group of songs you are browsing. |
To make the browse results less narrow again, select All in one of the Browser's columns. For example, to browse all your music again, click All in the Genre column. Hopefully, you can see that you can use the Browser to quickly scan your Library to locate music you want to hear or work with. As you use the Browser more, you will come to rely on it to get you to a group of songs quickly and easily. Searching Your Music Library You can use iTunes Search tool to search for specific songs. You can search for songs by any of the following criteria: To search for music in your Library, perform the following steps: 1. | Select the source you want to search (for example, click the Library source). As you might surmise, you can search any source in the Source list such as a CD, playlist, and so on by selecting it and then performing a search. tip | If you want to search by all data at the same time, you don't need to perform step 2 because All is the default selection. |
| 2. | Click the magnifying glass icon in the Search tool (see Figure 16.13). You will see a menu containing the list of data by which you can search. The currently selected search attribute is marked with a check mark. Figure 16.13. By selecting Artists on the menu, you can search the Artist field for all the songs in the selected source (in this case, the Library).
| 3. | Select the data for which you want to search in the menu. When you release the mouse button, the name of the Search tool will change to reflect your selection on the menu. For example, if you select Artists to search by the Artist field, the Search tool will be labeled Search Artists. | 4. | Type the data for which you want to search in the field. As you type, iTunes searches the selected source and presents the songs that meet your criterion in the Content pane. It does this on-the-fly so the search narrows with each keystroke. As you type more text or numbers, the search becomes more specific (see Figure 16.14). Figure 16.14. Because I selected Artist and typed lyn in the Search tool, the Content pane shows all songs whose artist includes the text lyn, as in The Lyndhurst Orchestra, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and so on.
| 5. | Keep typing until the search becomes as narrow as you need it to be to find the songs in which you are interested. |
After you have found songs, you can play them, add them to playlists, and so on. To clear your search click the Clear Search button that appears in the Search tool after you have typed in it (see Figure 16.14). The songs shown in the Content pane will again be determined by your selections in the Browser. |