make "shuffle" feature avoid repeats?

[Kevin]

It would be great (from my point of view) if the shuffle button did not bring up a truly random selection from the set list, but rather one of the songs that has not yet been played (or which has not been brought up by the shuffle button).

Would that be disadvantageous from others' point of view? Or would it be more complex than I am imagining? If so, perhaps the website Set List management could include a "Shuffle song order" feature?

Thanks for your consideration.

[arlo]

There is an option to sort the songs in a set list or smart list at random.

Are you talking here about the Random button in the Quick Add popup?

[Kevin]

There is an option to sort the songs in a set list or smart list at random.

Are you talking here about the Random button in the Quick Add popup?

Great! That encouraged me to go looking for it, and I see that (of course) the Shuffle button at the bottom of the "Set List Only" layout shuffles the sort order. That's the function I was hoping for.

I had been clicking that same symbol at the bottom of a screen for an individual song in the "Big Lyrics" layout, and of course it didn't accomplish the goal of passing through the set list in a random order.

Thanks for the quick response, and for the hyper-useful app.

[arlo]

The Random Song button (as I call it) in the bottom toolbar should work regardless of what kind of layout you have. Even if the song list isn't visible, it should jump you to a random song.

Here are the current randomization functions, from the June 10 release notes:

- While arranging the songs in a set list, you can now click the options button in any of the set headings and select Shuffle Songs In Set (or Sort Songs In Set to sort by a song field).

- While editing a smart list, you can set Sort By to Random and then the smart list will display in a different sequence each time you view it.

- While viewing a set list, you can click the Quick Add button, then click the Random Song button in the Quick Add popup, to show three random songs (tablets only). You can select one of these songs to add it to your set list, or keep clicking the Random Song button for additional choices.

- While viewing a set list or a smart list or editing a layout, you can click the Random Song button in the bottom toolbar to select a song at random from your list.

- You can also assign a remote control action to the Select Random Song function.

[Kevin]

Glad to learn about the "Sort By - Random" option for smart lists.

To clarify (since it doesn't seem clear yet), the behavior I was describing was that when clicking the Random Song button at the bottom of an individual song layout, the app returns a random song, but if one's goal was to play through the set of songs in a random order, that is not the best procedure to follow, as a random choice from the set of songs will often be one of the songs that you've already played, and the intention is not to play through random selections from the list but rather to play each song once in a random order. My "feature" request came from my lack of awareness of the many other procedures available for generating a random order of a set.

[arlo]

If I were to do more with that, I think the most logical thing would be tying it to the Completed Songs function, so if you're showing the song numbering and you check off songs as completed, it doesn't show those songs. That would still allow you to show a random song, decide not to do it right then, and choose another, but still have that one come up again later. I'll put that on my wish list.

[Kevin]

Wow, that sounds super. The Completed Songs function is new to me, so now I have that to look forward to exploring. Thanks, Arlo!

[arlo]

With yesterday's release, songs marked as completed will not be selected by the Random Song button. All yesterday's changes are listed here:

http://www.bandhelper.com/support/release_notes.html