You guys have some great music going on… I made a new playlist, shuffled it around, and here’s what I had tonight:

Avril Lavigne - Sk8er Boi
Barenaked Ladies - One Week
Christina Aguilera - Beautiful (Valentin Club Mix)
Eiffel 65 - Blue (Da Ba Dee)
Everclear - Everything to Everyone
Garbage - Push It
Goldfrapp - Ride a White Horse
Iio - Kiss You
Jewel - Stand (Markus Schulz Club Mix)
Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around
Kelly Clarkson - Behind These Hazel Eyes
Madonna - Sorry
Melanie C. - I Turn to You
Nelly Furtado - Say it Right
Nirvana - Come As You Are
Obsession - If I Can’t Have You
OK Go - Invincible
Reina - No One’s Gonna Change You
Sarah McLachlan - Sweet Surrender (DJ Tiesto Mix)
The Shins - New Slang
Snow Patrol - Tiny Little Fractures
Stars on 54 - If You Could Read My Mind
The Strokes - Hard to Explain
Tony Di Bart - The Real Thing
Ultra Nate - Free (Mood II Swing Radio Mix)
The White Stripes - Take, Take, Take

Lots of good beats and fun songs… I tried listening to a podcast while working out, but I’ve found that I’d really rather listen to those to get geared up for working out. I can also concentrate better on what’s being said if all my attention is on it. When I work out, I love to just get lost in the music.

I do have a question… probably kinda silly, but I was wondering if there’s any way that you guys know of to see exactly what was last played on your iPod Shuffle in iTunes? When I sort by “Last Played,” it pulls up the songs that I just heard which is great, but they’re in alphabetical order. For example, all the songs I just listed have the exact same “last played” time. I guess it just timestamps it when you sync, not when you play? Hmm…

Sweetea - 25 February 2007 11:05 PM

Here’s a new playlist I made for the gym today.  (cut)
Buttons - The Pussycat Dolls
Money Maker - Ludacris

OMG - I love Money Maker! 

I’m going to have those lists to share for y’all eventually, but that is definately up there.  It does tend to make one feel not only sexy, but in the groove.

You go girl!

rachel_laureene - 26 February 2007 06:29 AM

I do have a question… probably kinda silly, but I was wondering if there’s any way that you guys know of to see exactly what was last played on your iPod Shuffle in iTunes? When I sort by “Last Played,” it pulls up the songs that I just heard which is great, but they’re in alphabetical order. For example, all the songs I just listed have the exact same “last played” time. I guess it just timestamps it when you sync, not when you play? Hmm…

Hey There Rachel,

You can see the songs when you played them (date, time) in the main window.  When you’re in your MUSIC library, look at the tabs up top.  If you scroll all the way to the right, you should have a tab marked LAST PLAYED.  When you click it, it goes by the date and time you last played it all the way back to the songs you’ve never played on your iPod.  It should NOT be alphabetical, it should sort by date/time.  Try clicking it a few times if it isn’t coming up the way you like.

There is another option, and this is to play around with SMART PLAYLISTS.  A regular list that you have created, such as an ON-THE-GO list, comes up with a blue icon with a musical note in the center.  A SMART PLAYLIST is a purple icon with a star/flower icon in the center.  One of those lists should be titled RECENTLY PLAYED.

You can edit the RECENTLY PLAYED smart list to have as many songs in it as possible.  So while it may only house 25, you can make it more or less… whatever you like.

I love playing with SMART PLAYLISTS.  You can have the list look for all sorts of things, and it automatically drags the songs into your list based on the criteria you enter.  For example:

RETRO LIST - I have a list that looks for the GENRE of RETRO, and pulls the songs in.
4 TO 5 STARS ONLY - This list looks for songs that I have rated at 4 or 5 stars, thus, I really like these songs
0 stars - This means songs that I haven’t rated yet.  A great way to do so when I have a few moments
COUNTRY - Again, sorted by GENRE of COUNTRY

As for Motivation to Move, I created a SMART PLAYLIST with several rules
ARTIST contains Scott Smith
TIME is greater than 2:00 minutes

You can have as many or as few rules as you want with a SMART PLAYLIST, but they are a great tool in iTunes.  To create a SMART PLAYLIST, simply go to FILE and CREATE NEW SMART PLAYLIST.

Have fun messing with iTunes, and I hope this has helped.

Cheers,
~ Josette ~

Thanks for the info Josette,

I’ve been clicking on that “last played” tab, and it’s always worked for me… I can’t get it to work with the songs that I play on my Shuffle, though. All of the songs that I listened to last night for my workout have the exact same “played” timestamp- 5:07AM, which is when I synced the iPod.

I also made a new smart playlist, the rules were only songs on my workout playlist, and played within the last 2 days… that way I can easily see what I heard when I get home from the gym. It’s the same deal; all of the songs that were played on the iPod Shuffle have the exact same “last played” time. I dunno, maybe I’m still doing something wrong. I’ll go hop over to Apple support online and see if I can find anything else on this there…

hehe, thanks for your help, I think I’m either just doing something wrong, or maybe that’s just how the shuffles are… I dunno

Lets Get Loud by J Lo...great for a sprint!

Hey, Rachel...I just saw Garbage - Push it on your playlist…
I just made a big Garbage at the Gym playlist with a bunch of their songs.  It’s been getting me through long elliptical workouts.
Have you heard Curve?  They’re the band that originate that electro rock with loops and girl vocal sound way back in 1991.  I really like Garbage, but loooooove Curve.
Check them out.  Come Clean is a good album to start with.

make the beats go harder....

Hey, no I haven’t heard of Curve… it sounds like I’d love them, though! I’m gonna definitely check them out, thank you for the heads up.

haha, “Push It” is such a great workout song…

Wooo… just wanted to let you know, I just downloaded “Come Clean” from iTunes after listening to some samples. You were right, they’re amazing! Thanks again.

This isn’t music per say, but it is something to vary your playlist during the slow-burn workouts that so many people are doing.

If you’re interested in “training the brain”, may I suggest downloading the BRAINREADY BRAINCAST podcast from iTunes.  It’s a great way to add variety to your workout playlist, and has all kinds of information about health news, updates, and of course, the oh-so-fun brain training exercises.  Time will fly, believe it.

Exercises include imagination/visualization work, sensory, simple math, etc.  It’s similar to the Nintendo DS game BRAIN AGE, which is obviously targeted at adults.  Well, the marketing worked.  It’s a lot of fun, and it’s all based off of a Doctor’s research (forgive me, I forget his name) regarding training the brain vs. letting it fade as we age.

Give it a try if you like, you’ll enjoy it! 

Have a great day!
~ Josette ~

Cool, that sounds really interesting! Thanks for the tip.

Rachel....I’m glad you liked Curve.  I really like lifting weights to that CD.

Josette...thanks for the tip...I’m going to down load it tonight.  I’ve been doing sudoku puzzles all the time to give my brain some exercise.  I think it might be fun to work out my body and mind at the same time.  Two birds and all.

Hey Josette,

I tried the BrainCast and I love it.  My brain is a little rusty these days so this is just what I need. 

Thanks,
Carrie

I tried the braincast…
Although I really liked it, it was hard to conentrate on that and getting my heart rate up to 75% MHR, so I had to put on some beats.
I think I will save the braincast for driving in the car to work or for my lunch break.

thanks for the tips Josette!

I’m in the same boat as danger on this one… I really enjoyed doing the Braincast exercises, but I’ve gotta concentrate on them. Maybe as I progress, I can do them with more ease and while I’m doing other things… Hmm, mental AND physical exercise, how perfect is that? Thanks again!