USING OUR POWERFUL SEARCH ENGINE


Our webstore has a powerful search engine. Sometimes it's almost too powerful. Here are some tips on how to use it to your best advantage.

The "Search" function is located at the top right corner of most pages in the dark blue band. (See the illustration at the right.)

Just to the right of the word "Search" you will find a pull-down selector with five categories from which to choose. Here's how to use each of those categories:

ARTIST — If you want to search for recordings by a particular artist, just choose this category. Then type in the name of the artist in the white box immediately to the right. Then click "Go." (Suggestion: Limit your search to the specific artist by placing quotation marks around the name of the artist, such as "Florida Boys" rather than just the name of the group. "Signature Sound" would work nicely. With the marks, you'll get only results with those specific words in that order. Without the quotation marks, your search for the Florida Boys would pull up that group plus every other group with "boys" in their name — and there's a ton of 'em.)

TITLE — Use this category to find specific projects or other items by title (such as an album, video or book title) or to find a particular accompaniment track by song title. Limit your search by putting the title within quotation marks to avoid pulling up extraneous titles which include only a word or two from your desired title. Do not use this category to search for songs on a project. For those, use the "Description" category.

DESCRIPTION — This category searches the "Detailed Description" found with the entries for each specific item. Normally, this includes song titles. Use this category to search for song titles. The search will find all recordings with that particular song on it. Limit your search by placing the song title (or other exact search term) in quotation marks to avoid bringing up any items with even just one or two words from your search term. Do not use this category to search for accompaniment track titles; use the "Title" category for that purpose.

ITEM NUMBER — If you know the exact item number you are looking for (our item number as found in our printed catalog, our ads, our e-mail newsletter or previously found on the web) you can use this category to go to the item immediately. Just put the item number in the search field and hit "Go."

MEDIA FORMAT — This search brings up everything that we have in a given media format, such as "CD" or "cassette" or "DVD" or "book." A search for "DVD," for example, brings up every DVD that we carry. Obviously, these lists can be very long and such a search may have limited value. But, hey, it's neat anyway. (No, a search for "LP" or "8-track" won't normally find anything.)

IMPORTANT — Again, when searching for something specific, be sure to use those quotation marks. Note that if you only have a partial song title, putting in only the words you know can be a very effective way to zero in on what you're seeking. If you're sure the words you know are in the right order and adjacent to each other you can put them in quotation marks to limit the search. For example, under "Description," the term "Fly Away" (in quotation marks) would pull up any recording with "I'll Fly Away" as well as any other song with the words "Fly Away" in the title (such as "Fly Away Home").