Smartlists are Lexicon's auto-updating playlists. You set the rules once, and every track that matches drops in automatically, so a crate you built in June is still current in December without you touching it. The catch is that most DJs build one or two and stop there, when the rule editor can do a lot more. Below are twelve recipes you can build in a few minutes each and reuse for every gig. First, the three things about the editor that trip people up.
How smartlists actually work
Create one by right-clicking any playlist and choosing to add a new smartlist in that spot. Then you are looking at a list of rules and one toggle that decides everything.
- Any Rule vs All Rules. This toggle decides whether a track needs to match any of your rules or all of them. Genre-plus-BPM crates need All Rules. A grab-bag of "anything from these three labels" needs Any Rule.
- The OR clause only works in All Rules mode. This is the one that catches everyone. You can link two rules together with an OR clause to build grouped logic like
(Genre = "House" OR Genre = "Techno") AND (Rating = 3), but the OR link is ignored unless the smartlist is set to All Rules. If your OR crate is behaving strangely, check that toggle first. - Archived tracks stay hidden. Archived tracks are not visible in a smartlist unless you add a rule to show them. Good default, worth remembering when a track you expect is missing.
Full details are in the Smartlists manual page. Everything below is built from the fields in the Track Browser, so if a column exists on your tracks, you can write a rule on it.
Crate-digging recipes
1. Fresh imports from the last two weeks. Set Date Added greater than a date roughly two weeks back. This becomes your "what's new" crate. Great for prepping the tracks you actually bought recently instead of scrolling your whole library.
2. Five-star gems. One rule: Rating equals 5. Every DJ has a mental A-list, and this surfaces it instantly. Pair it with a genre rule under All Rules when you want your best house tracks or your best drum and bass in one view.
3. A label crate. Comment and Label are both text fields, so Label contains "Defected" (or whatever imprint you lean on) builds a running crate that fills itself as you buy more from that label. Swap in any label you collect heavily.
4. A multi-genre crate that actually works. Set the smartlist to All Rules, then link two genre rules with an OR clause and add a quality gate: (Genre contains "House" OR Genre contains "Tech House") AND Rating greater than 3. You get both genres in one crate, but only the ones you rated well. This is the pattern most people get wrong because they forget the All Rules requirement from the section above.
Energy and dancefloor recipes
Lexicon carries an Energy field, which most DJ apps do not, and it is the single most useful column for building set-position crates.
5. Peak-time weapons. All Rules, then Energy greater than 7 and BPM greater than 126. This is your 1 a.m. crate: high energy, up-tempo, nothing that needs a run-up. Tighten the numbers to match how you rate energy.
6. Warm-up and openers. The mirror image: Energy less than 4 and BPM less than 118. Slower, lower-intensity tracks for the first hour when the room is still filling. Having this ready stops you reaching for a peak-time banger at 9 p.m.
7. A tight BPM pocket. Two rules under All Rules: BPM greater than 122 and BPM less than 126. Now you have a crate where every track will beatmatch comfortably, which is gold for long blends and back-to-back sets. Shift the window for whatever tempo you are playing that night.
8. A harmonic key crate. Key is a special text field that you can use to find compatible keys. Use the "Is similar key" and it will list tracks that are compatible by key. This honors your "Key mixing mode" setting so you can change between harmonically compatible or fuzzy key compatible. It is a manual way to pre-stage a harmonic run, and it pairs well with recipe 7 when you want tracks that match on both tempo and key.
Library-hygiene recipes
9. Tracks you have never played. Plays equals 0. This is your "test these before you trust them" crate. Half of it will be filler you forgot you bought, the other half will be gems you never got around to. Either way you want to know.
10. Low-bitrate offenders. Bitrate less than 256. Anything that turns up here is a candidate to re-buy in a higher quality, or to retire before it embarrasses you on a big system. A quiet, always-on quality check.
11. Sourced-from notes. If you set a few keywords in the special "Any Text Field", you'll easily find tracks that have info that is clearly not part of the track, ready to clean up. This habit costs you two seconds per import and pays off every time you need to trace where something came from or just want to get rid of junk text.
12. A genre crate from Custom Tags. Lexicon's Custom Tags live in categories you define, like Genre, Mood or Vibe, and tags within the same category are matched as OR while different categories are matched as AND. So a "Drum & Bass" tag in your Genre category, combined under All Rules with Energy greater than 5, gives you an upbeat drum & bass crate that stays current as you tag new music. Custom Tags are where Lexicon pulls ahead of the built-in playlist tools in Rekordbox or Serato DJ Pro, so this is worth the setup time.
Build once, reuse forever
The reason smartlists beat manual crates is that they never go stale. A regular playlist is a snapshot of your library on the day you made it. A smartlist is a live query, so the "fresh imports" crate is always fresh and the "five-star house" crate grows itself every time you rate a track.
Two habits make all of this stick. First, keep your metadata clean, because a smartlist is only as good as the Energy, Rating, Genre and Comment values you feed it. Second, when a crate misbehaves, check the Any Rule / All Rules toggle before anything else, since that single switch is behind most "why is this track here" moments. Build these twelve, rename them to fit how you play, and you have a prep system that runs itself.
