Did you know your iTunes music collection is loaded with mood music? Yep. I found a little Mac app that color codes music in iTunes.
Red for hot. Blue for cool. Orange and yellow and green for other moods. Why do we need to categorize our music in iTunes by color? Hey, I don’t know. But it didn’t cost much, didn’t take much time, and it’s interesting to see what’s hot, cool, or otherwise.
The Mood Music Music Player
Remember what I said about Mac apps that really a solution looking for a problem? That’s ChromaTunes. It’s a simple Mac app that scans the music in your iTunes music library and color codes the songs.
Yes, I’m serious. It’s not a joke. It seriously does this. Think color analysis for your music and you’ve got it.
The guys who created ChromaTunes call it HPE energy, which has something to do with a song’s sonic energy level.
It sounds very mumbo jumbo to me but the end result is rather simple. ChromaTunes scans the songs in iTunes, then pops up an iTunes-like player with song name, artist, album, time, genre, etc.
In the column left of the song title is a little round colored dot to represent the HPE energy color analysis. In short, red for hot, blue for cool and various and sundry colors in between.
Here’s what it looks like:
Simple enough, right? The Bee Gees version of Grease is definitely dance material, hence a higher energy level. Billy Joel’s She’s Always A Woman falls into the green area. One is high energy. One is not. Songs with a blue dot are probably for the dead.
If your music collection is extensive, ChromaTunes gives you options. Use Surprise me for a random selection. Or, grab a specific song mood from the menu.
However it does the magic, ChromaTunes seems to know how to categorize each song into specific mood categories.
Need something hot and rockin’? Pink or red or purple.
Ready for bedtime? Dark blue or light blue. Green is for chillin’. Yellow is uplifting.
ChromaTunes does a real time sonic analysis on your music (as opposed to using a database).
It even features a smart More Like This Tune function to create a whole list of similar songs. I’d like to describe all the other features, but that’s about it. It’s like having a color coded mood selection (vs. genre) for your songs.
Negatives? A few. Nothing transfers to iTunes on your iPod or iPhone. And it doesn’t work with music that has DRM (digital rights management). Otherwise, ChromaTunes is interesting, mildly useful, and presents a new way to look at your music.
About Alexis Kayhill
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