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cmus-tutorial(7)	Miscellaneous Information Manual	cmus-tutorial(7)

NAME
     cmus - C* Music Player tutorial

CONTENTS
     Step 1: Starting Cmus

     Step 2: Adding Music

     Step 3: Playing Tracks From The Library

     Step 4: Managing The Queue

     Step 5: The Playlists

     Step 6: Find that track

     Step 7: Customization

     Step 8: Quit

     Step 9: Further Reading

Step 1: Starting Cmus
     When  you	first launch cmus (just type cmus in a terminal and press Enter)
     it will open to the album/artist view, which looks something like this:

     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
     | Library			  Empty (use :add)			   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |									   |
     | . 00:00					     library | 100% | C    |
     |									   |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

     This is the view where your artists and albums will be displayed.

Step 2: Adding Music
     Press 5 to switch to the file-browser view so we can add  some  music.  You
     should see something like this:

     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
     | Browser - /home/jasonwoof					   |
     | ../								   |
     | Desktop/ 							   |
     | MySqueak/							   |
     | audio-projects/							   |
     | audio/								   |
     | bin/								   |
     | config/								   |
     |									   |
     | . 00:00					     library | 100% | C    |
     |									   |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

     Now,  use the arrow keys, Enter and Backspace to navigate to where you have
     audio files stored. To add music to your cmus library, use the  arrow  keys
     to highlight a file or folder, and press a. When you press a cmus will move
     you to the next line down (so that it is easy to add a bunch of files/fold-
     ers in a row) and start adding the file/folder you pressed a on to your li-
     brary.  This  can	take  a while if you added a folder with a lot in it. As
     files are added, you will see the second time in the bottom  right  go  up.
     This is the total duration of all the music in the cmus library.

     Note: cmus does not move, duplicate or change your files. It just remembers
     where they are and caches the metadata (duration, artist, etc.)

     Just to be on the safe side, let's save. Type :save and press Enter.

     Note:  Cmus  automatically  saves	your settings and library and everything
     when you quit, so you probably won't use the save command much.

Step 3: Playing Tracks From The Library
     Press 2 to go to the simple library view. You  should  see  something  like
     this:

     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
     | Library - 31 tracks (1:35:11) sorted by albumartist date album disa| |
     | Flying Lizards	      . Money (That's What I Want)	     02:31 |
     | Jason Woofenden	      . VoR Theme			2009 01:20 |
     | Keali'i Reichel	    06. Wanting Memories		1994 04:28 |
     | Molly Lewis	      . Tom Cruise Crazy		     03:13 |
     | NonMemory	      . pista1				2009 03:18 |
     | NonMemory	    01. pista1			  2009-04-21 04:13 |
     | Ray Charles	    06. Halleluja I Love Her So 	     02:33 |
     |									   |
     | . 00:00				 artist from library | 100% | C    |
     |									   |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

     Use  the  up  and down arrow keys to select a track you'd like to hear, and
     press Enter to play it. Here are some keys to control playback:

     Press c to pause/unpause. Press right/left to seek by 10 seconds. Press ,/.
     seek backwards/forwards one minute. Press z to play the previous track  and
     b to play the next track.

     cmus  has	some great options to control what plays next (if anything) when
     the track ends. The state of these settings is shown in  the  bottom  right
     corner.  The  first of these shows what collection of tracks we are playing
     (shown here as "artist from library"). Press m to cycle through the differ-
     ent options for this setting. To the right of that (past the  volume)  cmus
     shows  the state of four toggles. Only toggles which are "on" are shown, so
     now we only see the C. Here are the toggles:

     [C]ontinue

	 If this is off, cmus will always stop at the end of the track. You  can
     toggle this setting by pressing shift-C.

     [F]ollow

	 If  this  is  on, cmus will select the currently playing track on track
     change. Press f to toggle this option.

     [R]epeat

	 If this is on (and continue is on), when cmus reaches the  end  of  the
     group  of	tracks	you're	playing  (selected with the m key) it will start
     again from the beginning. Press r to toggle this setting.

     [S]huffle or [&]lbum shuffle

	 If this is 'S', cmus will choose a random  order  to  play  all  tracks
     once,  while  '&' will do the same for whole albums. Press s to toggle this
     option.

Step 4: Managing The Queue
     Lets say you're listening to a song, and you want to select which song will
     play next, without interrupting the currently  playing  song.  No	problem!
     Just  go  to the song you want to hear next (in any of the views) and press
     e. The queue is FIFO, meaning if you queue up another track, it  will  play
     after the one you already had queued up.

     Note: The queue is not affected by the "shuffle" option described above.

     Press  4  to  view/edit the queue. This view works and looks a lot like the
     simple library view. The main difference is that you can change  the  order
     of  the  tracks  with  the  p and P keys. You can press shift-D to remove a
     track from the queue.

     When cmus is ready to play another track (it's reached the end of	a  track
     and  the  "continue"  setting  is on) it will remove the top entry from the
     queue and start playing it.

Step 5: The Playlists
     The playlists work like another set of libraries (like view 2) except  that
     (like  the  queue)  you  manually	set the order of the tracks. This can be
     quite useful if you want to create a mix of specific tracks or if you  want
     to  listen  to  an  audio book without having the chapters play when you're
     playing from the library.

     The playlists are on view 3. But before we go there, let's add some tracks.
     Press 2 to go to the simple library view, go to a track you want and  press
     y	to  add  it to a playlist. The only visual feedback you'll get that any-
     thing happened is that the highlight will move down one row. Add a few more
     so you have something to work with.

     Now press 3 to go to the playlist. You should see something like this:

     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
     | Playlist 		  Default			     11:32 |
     | * Default		| Flying Lizards     . Money (Th...  02:31 |
     |				| Jason Woofenden    . VoR T... 2009 01:20 |
     |				| Keali'i Reichel  06. Wanti... 1994 04:28 |
     |				| Molly Lewis	     . Tom Cruis...  03:13 |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |				|					   |
     |									   |
     | . 00:00					     library | 100% | C    |
     |									   |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

     Just like the queue, you can use the p, P and D keys  to  move  and  delete
     tracks from the playlist.

     Note: Changing the view (e.g. by pressing 3) does not affect what cmus will
     play  next.  To put cmus into "play from the playlist" mode, press Enter on
     one of the tracks in the playlist. To switch modes without interrupting the
     currently-playing song, you can press shift-M.

Step 6: Find that track
     This step shows various ways you can find track(s) you're looking for.

     Search: Press 2 to be sure you're on the simple library view, then press  /
     to  start	a  search. Type a word or two from the track you're looking for.
     cmus will search for tracks that have all those words in them. Press  enter
     to  get  the  keyboard  out  of  the search command, and n to find the next
     match.

     Tree View: Press 1 to select the tree view. Scroll  to  the  artist,  press
     space to show their albums, scroll to the album you want, then press tab so
     the  keyboard controls the right column. Press tab again to get back to the
     left column.

     Filters: See the reference manual (see Further Reading  below)  for  a  de-
     tailed  description  on  how to quickly (and temporarily) hide most of your
     music.

Step 7: Customization
     Cmus has some very cool settings you  can	tweak,	like  changing	the  way
     tracks  are  displayed  (e.g. to display disk numbers), enabling replaygain
     support or changing the keybindings.

     Press 7 for a quick overview of the current keybindings and settings.

     To change a setting or keybind, just select it (up/down keys) and press en-
     ter. This will put the command for the current setting in the command  line
     (bottom left of your screen), which you can edit to put in a new value/key.

     Please  see the reference manual (see Further Reading below) for a detailed
     description of all the commands and settings available.

Step 8: Quit
     When you're done, type :q and press Enter to quit. This will save your set-
     tings, library, playlist and queue.

Step 9: Further Reading
     Cmus comes with a great reference manual. Now that you've	got  the  basics
     down  it  should be intelligible. Try man cmus in a terminal. If that's not
     installed, try opening up cmus.txt from the Doc directory, or read the lat-
     est version online:

     https://github.com/cmus/cmus/blob/master/Doc/cmus.txt

     There are more commands and features not covered here like loading and sav-
     ing playlists, controlling cmus remotely with cmus-remote, etc.

cmus				   14/02/2010			cmus-tutorial(7)

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