Absolute Beginner's Guide to iPod and iTunes

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You might not need to do step 1 depending on your how computer is configured. If iTunes is set to be the default application for audio CDs, the application will open automatically when you insert an audio CD in your computer.

What iTunes has in common with its much less-sophisticated cousins the boombox and the standard CD player is the capability to play audio CDs. Although the basic function is the same, iTunes has several tricks in its bag to make listening even better. So, grab a CD and give it a try:

1.

Open iTunes.

2.

Insert an audio CD into your computer. In a moment, the CD will be mounted on your computer and will appear and be selected in the Source list (see Figure 15.1).

Figure 15.1. When a CD appears on the Source list, it awaits your listening pleasure.

By default, iTunes will automatically connect to the Internet and attempt to identify the CD you have inserted. If it finds it, it will display the CD's information, including the CD name, track names, times, artist, and genre, in the Content pane (in Figure 15.1, you can see the CD's information has been found). This is really cool because iTunes does most of the labeling work for you; this comes in handy when you want to search or browse for music to create playlists or just to listen to specific tracks.

If iTunes finds information for a CD, it remembers that information and displays it each time you insert the CD.

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If you don't want iTunes to check for a CD's information automatically, you can disable this feature, as you will learn a little later in this chapter.

At the bottom of the iTunes window is the Source Information display. This will show you the total number of songs on the CD, how long it plays, and the total disc space used.

If the CD's information isn't located, you can add it yourself (see Chapter 17, "Labeling, Categorizing, and Configuring Your Music").

3.

To play the CD, do any of the following: click the Play button in the upper-left corner of the window (when a CD is playing, this becomes the Pause button); select Controls, Play; or press the spacebar.

The CD will begin to play. As a song plays, a speaker icon appears next to it in the Content pane to indicate it is the current song, and information about that song appears in the Information window (see Figure 15.2).

Figure 15.2. You can tell this CD is playing because the Play button has become the Pause button and the speaker icon shown next to the song currently being played.

4.

Control the volume of the sound by dragging the Volume slider to the left to turn it down or to the right to turn it up. You can also control the volume by selecting Controls, Volume Up or Controls, Volume Down. For yet another option, press the Ctrl+Up arrow and Ctrl+Down arrow keys on Windows PCs or the +Up arrow and +Down arrow keys on Macs to set the volume from the keyboard.

To mute the sound, select Controls, Mute. On Windows PCs you can press Ctrl+Alt+Down arrow, whereas on Macs you can press Option++Down arrow to do the same thing.

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Using the Volume slider within iTunes only changes the volume of iTunes relative to your system's volume. If you can't make the music loud or quiet enough, check your system volume level.

5.

To pause a song, click the Pause button; select Controls, Pause; or press the spacebar.

That's it. You now know everything you need to listen to an audio CD. However, there are lots more ways to control the tunes, some of which are in the following list:

  • Double-click any song to play it. When you do that, the speaker icon will jump to the song which you double-clicked and it will play.

  • When a song is playing and you click and hold the Rewind or Fast Forward button, the song will rewind or fast-forward until you release the button.

  • If a song is not playing or a song is playing but you single-click (but don't hold the button down) the Rewind or Fast Forward button, the previous or next song, respectively, will be selected. You can also select Controls, Next Song or Controls, Previous Song to move to the next or the previous song. And for yet another method to do the same thing, you can press the Ctrl+Right arrow and Ctrl+Left arrow keys on a Windows PC or the -Right arrow and -Left arrow keys on a Mac to move to the next or previous song.

  • You can set a default action for iTunes to perform each time you insert a CD into your computer. You do this with the iTunes Preferences dialog box, which you will be using throughout this part of the book. Select Edit, Preferences (Windows) or iTunes, Preferences (Mac). The Preferences dialog box will appear. The Preferences dialog box has several panes that you access by clicking the related tab (Windows) or icon (Mac). Click the General tab (Windows) or General icon (Mac). Use the On CD Insert drop-down list to choose the default action iTunes should perform when it recognizes an audio CD. Show Songs just displays the list of tracks on the CD. Begin Playing starts playing the CD as soon as it is mounted on your computer (this does the same thing as clicking the Play button). Import Songs adds the selected songs on the CD to your Library. Import Songs and Eject does the same thing as Import Songs, but it ejects the CD when all its tracks have been added to your Library. (You'll see the value of the last two settings in the next chapter.)

  • To remove a CD from your computer, select it in the Source list and select Controls, Eject Disc; press Ctrl+E (Windows) or +E (Macintosh); or click the Eject button located in the lower-right corner of the iTunes window.

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When you "freeze" information in the Information window, it remains frozen until the next track is played, at which point it starts rotating again.

Viewing Information While Listening to Tunes

You can view different information in the Information window, such as the name, artist, and album of the currently playing song. When you first view this window, it contains a timeline bar that represents the total length of the song being played (see Figure 15.3). A black diamond (the Playhead) indicates the relative position of the music you are hearing at any point in time compared to the total length of the song.

Figure 15.3. The iTunes Information window looks basic, but there is much hidden behind its quiet demeanor.

At the top of the Information window is a line of text. What appears here changes over time; it automatically rotates between the artist's name, album name, and name of the song currently playing. You can freeze this display on a specific attribute, such as song name, by clicking the text. Each time you click, the information will change from album to artist to song name. Whichever one you last clicked will remain showing in the window.

Underneath the album, artist, and song name line is time information. This can display the elapsed time (the amount of time a song has been playing), remaining time (the amount of time a song has left), or total time (the song's total length). Unlike the name information, this display does not rotate among these values. You can set the value being displayed by clicking the text; each time you click, a different time value will be shown until you have rotated among all three values.

If you click the Show Current Song button, the song currently playing will be selected; this is indicated by it becoming highlighted in blue. This can be handy when you are working with other music while listening to a song because you can click this button to quickly return to the song that is playing.

Finally, if you click the Change Display button, the display will become a graphical representation of the volume levels at various frequency groups (see Figure 15.4). You can return to the title information by clicking the button again.

Figure 15.4. Why would you want to use the volume level display in the Information window? No real reason, but it does look kind of cool.

Controlling the Tunes

Playing an audio CD from start to finish and controlling the volume are useful and required tasks, but with iTunes you can take control of your music so that you hear only what you want to hear, in the order in which you want to hear it. In the following sections, you'll see how iTunes lets you take control of your tunes. For example, in the next section, you'll learn how to choose the songs you want to hear.

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The neat thing about the Information window is that it changes based on the context of what you are doing. You have seen how it works when you listen to music. When you add music to your Library, the information and tools in the window become those you use for the import process.

Choosing the Songs You Hear

Let's face it, you probably don't like every song on a CD no matter how much you like the CD on the whole. With iTunes, you can choose the songs that play when you play the CD. You can cause a song to be skipped by unchecking its check box (see Figure 15.5). When the CD plays, it will skip over every song whose check box is unchecked.

Figure 15.5. Here, the song "Turn It Up" will be skipped because its Select check box is unchecked (of course, this is only an example; all the songs on this CD are excellent).

To have iTunes include and thus play the song again the next time you play the CD, simply check its check box again.

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Along with a CD's information, iTunes remembers the settings you make for a CD and reuses them each time you insert and play the CD. This includes skipping songs, changing the order in which they play, and so on. Cool!

Choosing the Order in Which Songs Play

iTunes determines the order in which songs play by the order in which they are shown in the Content pane, starting from the top of the pane and moving toward the bottom. By default, songs are listed and therefore play in the order they appear on the CD, from track 1 to the last track on the disc. However, you can make songs on a CD play in any order you choose. You have a couple ways to do this.

You can change the order in which songs are listed in the Content pane (and thus the order in which they play) by dragging the songs up or down in the pane (see Figure 15.6). When you change the order of the songs in the pane, you change the order in which they will play.

Figure 15.6. Order! Order! Compare the order of the songs in this figure with the previous one; listening to the CD now will be an entirely different experience.

You can also change the order of tracks by sorting the Content pane by the various attributes shown, such as Track Number, Song Name, Time, Artist, and so on. You can do this by clicking the column heading of the attribute by which you want to sort the list. When you do so, the tracks will be sorted by that column (see Figure 15.7). To change the direction of the sort (from ascending to descending or from descending to ascending), click the Sort Order triangle; the sort direction will be reversed and the songs will be reordered accordingly. Just like when you manually move songs around, they will play in the order in which they are listed in the pane.

Figure 15.7. Now the order of the songs is based on their length; in this case, the longest song on the CD will play first, then the next longest second, and so on.

The column by which the pane is sorted is indicated by the column heading being highlighted in blue this defaults to the first column, which is the Track Number (which, by the way, is the only unnamed column because it applies only to audio CDs and to no other sources). (When a CD is the source, the Track Number column is always the first or leftmost column in the Content pane.) When you select a different column, its heading becomes blue to show that it is the current sort column.

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To return a CD to the default order, click the first column and then make the Sort Order triangle point down. This returns the CD to play by track number.

You can also tell which column is the current sort column by the Sort Order triangle. It only appears in the sort column. When the triangle is pointing down, the sort is descending. When the triangle is pointing up, the sort is ascending.

Getting Random

For a little variety, you can have iTunes play songs in a random order. This feature is called Shuffle. To use this feature, click the Shuffle button located at the bottom of the window (second one from the left) or select Controls, Shuffle. The songs will be reordered in the Content pane and will play in the order in which they are listed (hopefully in a random fashion). The Shuffle button will be highlighted in blue to indicate that it is active.

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If you have manually reordered a CD by dragging songs up and down in the Content pane, that order is remembered and used when you sort the CD by the first column (Track Number). To put songs back in their original order, drag them so that track 1 is at the top, track 2 is next, and so on.

To return the CD to the order you have set for it (or its original order if you haven't changed it), click the Shuffle button again or select Controls, Shuffle.

There is a preference setting that determines whether songs are shuffled by song or album, which you will learn about later. (Because all the songs on a CD are from the same album, this setting has no impact when you shuffle a CD's songs. It does become important when shuffling your Library or a playlist.)

Repeating Tracks

Sometimes, you just can't get enough of the music to which you are listing. In that case, you can set iTunes to repeat an entire CD once or to repeat only a single song. To repeat your tunes, check out these pointers:

  • To have iTunes repeat an entire CD, select Controls, Repeat All or click the Repeat button located at the bottom of the window (third one from the left). The Repeat button will become highlighted to show you that it is active, and the CD will repeat when you play it.

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    If you used the menu to shuffle a disc, you will notice that the Shuffle command on the menu has a check mark next to it. This check mark shows you that the command is currently active. When it isn't, the check mark will disappear. This is true of other settings as well, such as Repeat.

  • To repeat only the selected song, select Controls, Repeat One or click the Repeat button a second time. A "1" will appear on the Repeat button to indicate that only the current song will be repeated.

  • To turn off the repeat function, select Controls, Repeat Off or click the Repeat button until it is no longer highlighted in blue.

Controlling iTunes from the Desktop

Using the controls you have seen so far is fine, but you might not want to have the iTunes window foremost all the time. You must be able to see iTunes to control it, right? Wrong!

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Using Repeat, you might hear a song you don't like all that much more than once. Remember to uncheck the Select check box for any songs you don't want to hear. They will be skipped no matter how you play the CD.

Controlling iTunes from the Windows System Tray

When iTunes is running on a Windows machine, an iTunes icon is displayed in the System Tray. Right-click this icon and you will see an iTunes menu (see Figure 15.8). At the top of the menu is the Show iTunes command; select it to move into the iTunes window. Just under this command is the Now Playing section that provides information about the music that is currently playing (if no music is playing or selected, you won't see this section in the menu). You can use the commands on this menu just as you can from within iTunes itself. For example, you can skip to the next song by selecting Next Song. After you select a command, you can move off the menu and it will disappear. This is a handy way to control iTunes without having to make its window active or even being able to see it.

Figure 15.8. You can control iTunes even if you can't see it.

If you don't want the iTunes icon to appear in the System Tray for some reason, you can remove it. Open the iTunes Preferences dialog box (Ctrl+,), click the Advanced tab, uncheck the Show iTunes icon in system tray check box, and click OK. The icon will no longer appear in your System Tray.

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To keep iTunes out of the way, open it and select a source, such as an audio CD. Then configure and play the source. Minimize (Windows) or hide (Mac) the iTunes window so it no longer appears on your desktop. Then, you can use the iTunes System Tray icon menu (Windows) or iTunes Dock icon menu (Mac) to control it for example, to pause your tunes when you receive a phone call.

Controlling iTunes from the Mac's Dock

The iTunes icon on the Mac OS X enables you to control iTunes at any time even when the iTunes window is in the background, when its window is minimized, or when the application is hidden. When you Ctrl-click the iTunes Dock icon (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse), the iTunes menu will appear (see Figure 15.9). At the top of this menu is the iTunes command that will move you into the iTunes window. Just under that is the Now Playing section that provides information about the song currently playing (if no music is selected or playing, you won't see this section). You can control iTunes by selecting a command on the iTunes Dock menu. For example, you can pause the music by selecting Pause. After you select a command, the menu will disappear and you can get back to what you were doing.

Figure 15.9. On the Mac, you use its Dock menu to control iTunes even when you can't see the application, such as when you are working with Excel.

Controlling iTunes on a Mac with the iTunes Widget

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If you use iTunes as much as I do, you'll want the application running all the time. Open the iTunes Dock menu and select the Open at Login command. This will add iTunes to your list of Login items so it will open each time you log in to your Mac.

Version 10.4 of the Mac OS introduced the cool Dashboard function that provides quick access to miniapplications called widgets. One of the default widgets enables you to control iTunes.

First, configure the iTunes widget to appear when you use the Dashboard by performing the following steps:

1.

Press your Dashboard key on the keyboard; by default on desktop Macs, this is the F12 key. Mobile Macs use other keys depending on the model you are using. The Dashboard will appear. If the iTunes widget appears, you can skip the rest of these steps.

2.

Click the + located in the lower-left corner of the desktop. The Dashboard bar will appear.

3.

Drag the iTunes widget from the bar onto the location on your desktop where you want it to be when you open the Dashboard.

4.

Close the Dashboard by pressing its key.

When you want to use the iTunes widget, open the Dashboard by pressing its key. Your widgets will appear, including the iTunes widget (see Figure 15.10). Some of the controls look slightly different than they do within iTunes, but they work in the same way. Use the controls, such as rotating the Volume wheel to change volume, and then hide the Dashboard again by pressing its key or clicking someplace else.

Figure 15.10. The iTunes widget is another way to control iTunes when you aren't working with the application directly.

One control that isn't so obvious is the ability to select a music source from within the iTunes widget. Open the widget and wait for a moment or two (just how long is a moment, anyway?). An i will appear at the bottom of the widget near its center. Click this button and you will see a Source pop-up menu. Choose a source (such as your Library or a playlist) on this menu and click Done. You can play the source by clicking the widget's Play button and control the music with the other widget controls.

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You can open iTunes from the iTunes widget by clicking the Play button a couple of times.

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