Here's a quick overview of the search functionality available on mu:zines.
• Global Search - is the main archive search feature.
Article Browse/Filter pages have more content-specific filtering options, and these are:
• Features (articles on topics) - browse feature articles by topic, eg "MIDI", "Sampling" etc
• Gear + Ads (articles on gear) - browse articles by gear type, manufacturer and model, and gear tags. You can also flip to "Ads" mode and filter and search gear ads, and ads from vendors (typically music stores/retailers).
• Artists & Interviews (articles on people) - browse artists, bands and people by name and role, eg "producer", "programmer", "keyboard player".
Global search is the main way to do a general site search, and is available at the top of all pages.
This will perform a text search for the phrase you enter. So if you enter dx7 as your search, and hit return, you are asking "show me articles which contain the word dx7" - this will include DX7 reviews and features, but will also include articles where perhaps someone is saying "I really dislike the DX7..."
The search results page also gives you a form in which you can refine or change your searches - you can limit the results to a particular year or date range, a particular magazine, change the displayed order of results and so on. This lets you define more specific queries such as "show me articles which contain the word dx7, and are tagged with the Synthesis & Sound Design topic, from the 80s, and sort them by Issue Date.
A summary of your chosen filter settings is displayed at the top of your search results in small boxes. The "Sort by" box has an icon reflecting the sort order, and you can click on this icon to reverse the sort order (except for Search Ranking order, where reversing the order doesn't make sense - you don't really want to see the worst ranked matches first!).
A search query in the text field is always required, and is searching article content on your entered phrase. If you check "Advanced Mode", then you have the option of a more powerful search on individual words, such as:
+yamaha +"fm synthesis" -dx7
This asks "show me articles that must contain yamaha, "fm synthesis", but not dx7".
Words without a plus or minus symbol in front are optional, for instance:
roland +"fm synthesis"
...would match articles containing "fm synthesis", whether roland was present or not - so always add a "+" symbol on terms that must be present in the search results.
This gives you a tool to match a certain word or phrase, and exclude items that contain other words, which can be helpful if you are looking for something particular. For most general cases though, Advanced Mode isn't required.
If you come up with a search setting you like, you can use the "Copy link to clipboard" function to generate a web link (URL) which you can bookmark or share online, which will link directly back to your exact search setting.
Note: Global search only searches archive article content, it doesn't search for ads (use the Gear page for those), or site content, the blog etc.
As you start typing in the main search field at the top of a page, Quicksearch will try to match your query against meta data, and show you matching items in the drop-down menu as you type, which is quite powerful and can be useful in a number of ways.
For instance, with our dx7 query, you'll see the menu will show gear matches for Synth > Yamaha > DX7, and the DX7IID, IIFD and DX7S as well as other matches. If you just press return, the top item selected is "Text search for: dx7", and will perform the above text search for the word dx7 as usual.
But if you use your down cursor key (or click) to select Synth > Yamaha > DX7 and press return, you'll be taken directly to the Gear page, with those gear categories selected, and this will give you a more focused search - rather than asking "show me articles which contain the word dx7", you're instead asking "show me articles tagged with the Yamaha DX7 gear item" - DX7 reviews, and additionally features and other items directly tagged with that Gear item.
You can be more general too, and this doesn't just work with gear items. Here's some examples:
- yamaha drum machine | - john |
- sampler roland | - tape |
- korg sound module | - 8 track |
- sci prophet | - engineer |
- cassette | - turnkey |
- cardioid | - mixing |
- synth | - project |
- sound module | - fix |
- keyboard |
You can even search for other items on the site, including:
- help, email, faq, about, blog, donate, copyright, scanning, rss, twitter and more...
There's also a fast way to go directly to a particular active issue or publication:
- sos 92 (show all Sound On Sound issues from 1992)
- emm jan 85 (go to the E&MM Jan '85 issue)
- polyphony
Quicksearch tries to match from your query against a range of items, including Gear Types ("Synth", "Guitar" etc), Manufacturers, Model ("D50", "M1" etc), Artists and Artist Roles ("Producer", "Drummer" etc), Authors, Gear Tags, Topics ("MIDI", "Sampling" etc), Magazine and Issues, Vendors (for adverts) and more.
The menu is limited in entries, so if you type, say synth, you won't get the full list of all individual items (there could be many hundreds), but you can continue to narrow down the results as you type.
So basically Quicksearch is a quick way to perform more direct queries that just running text searches on articles, and see matching metadata items in real time.
If you don't select any metadata items from the menu and instead choose to just press return (with the default "Text search for:" item selected), you will be taken to the global search results for your query, but the same metadata matches that Quicksearch returns (if there are any) will be displayed at the top of the search results, giving you another opportunity to explore those items directly should you wish.
These pages let you browse, filter and search the various main article types with more specific features that wouldn't make sense to add to the global search form (it would be massive and over-complicated!), and using context-relevant metadata directly to get better results than just plain text searches would give (as often items of gear are spelled in a variety of different ways!).
Unlike Search, you don't need a search query, as each of these filters will show you all the matching articles by default, which you can filter as needed using the form. For example, if you're interested in Producers, you can go to the Interviews section, and choose Producers from the "Role" menu, and you'll just see interviews with Producers.
(Tip - use Quicksearch to go directly here by typing producer and choosing Artist Role -> Producer from the menu).
Once you play with the various search and browse features on offer, they should (hopefully!) be fairly self-explanatory for the most part.
Enjoy digging through the archive, and see what treasures you can unearth! And if you find something cool, share it with others who might also enjoy it on your social channels!
The Search Manual
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