The Weirdest mode in Emacs

Note: The user has switched to neovim since writing this post. The information may not be up-to-date

Considering Emacs has a lot of inbuilt functionality , existence of this mode is not a suprise.

If you don’t know about MPC-Mode , this mode allows us to control , manage and restructure your music database by interfacing with the MPD Server.

MPD(Music Player Daemon) is a popular music server on the Linux world. It helps in keeping your large music collection organized. You can also stream , and remotely control your own music collection.

The Suprise

The biggest problem with this mode, is the lack of documentation. There is minimal documentation for this mode , available through describe-package command. Although it is not enough to use it efficiently. And for evil-users the journey is quite hard.

How does it work ?

To start the mpc interface , just use the command mpc using M-x. The interface contains 5 windows/splits. Here’s a pic for reference

The screen is effectively divided into 2 parts vertically. The top split is further divided into 3 splits horizontally. The bottom split is split into 2 horizontally splits.

• The top-left split is the Genre split.

• The top-middle split is the Artist | Composer split.

• The top-right one is the Playlist | Album split.

• The bottom-left split is the Status split.The bottom-right split is the MPC-Songs split.

Now that we know what each split is called, let’s begin!

One things you have to know about MPC is that you cannot select a single song! You have to select a artist / playlist / genre .

MPC-Songs

This is the main split with the main information. It shows the songs included in currently selected artist / playlist / genre. Use the mpc-playlist command to show the current playlist. You can select a song using the command mpc-select. Remove it using the mpc-playlist-delete command. You can save the current playlist using mpc-playlist-create.If viewing a different playlist in “MPC-Songs” split. , you can use mpc-playlist-add to add it in the current playlist.

MPC Playlist

This view is useful for viewing all the differnt albums and playlists you currently have.Again to actually select a song use the command mpc-select. Moving up and down is using the standard C-n and C-p.When a album or playlist is selected , the artists involved are shown in the “MPC-Artist” split. The white line denotes where the involved artists name ends and uninvolved artists name starts.To add the selected album to current playlist use mpc-playlist-add

In the same way the currently selected album / playlist has it’s genre shown in the “MPC-Genre” split.

MPC Genre

This view works in the same way. When selected a genre using mpc-select , all the artist involved are shown in the “MPC-Artist” split. All the albums in the genre are shown in the “MPC-Album” split.

MPC Artist

In the same way , you can select a artist using mpc-select. And it’s information will be shown in the respective splits.

MPC Status

The currently playing song , album and artist are shown here.Also there is a graphical volume bar. This is a little lacking as it does not show whether “Shuffle , Consume , Single " modes are active. It has a mouse-based volume bar , but it cannot be controlled using keyboard , nor there is a command for it.

Evil Keybindings

Currently the evil-collection does not support mpc-mode.Although it has been requested (https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil-collection/issues/535) . Using general.el I have created some of my own keybindings. My keybindings also need custom function for moving up and down.

1(defun move-mpc-down ()
2  (interactive)
3  (evil-next-visual-line)
4  (mpc-select))
5(defun move-mpc-up ()
6  (interactive)
7  (evil-previous-visual-line)
8  (mpc-select))

Below are the keybindings I use for MPC-mode.

You can change these , according to your workflow. The mpc-play-at-point simply plays whatever you have selected directly , clearing the current playlist.

 1(general-define-key
 2 :keymaps 'mpc-mode-map
 3 :states 'normal
 4 "j" 'move-mpc-down
 5 "k" 'move-mpc-up
 6 "t" 'mpc-toggle-play
 7 "r" 'mpc-toggle-repeat
 8 "s" 'mpc-toggle-shuffle
 9 "S" 'mpc-toggle-shuffle
10 "c" 'mpc-toggle-consume
11 "a" 'mpc-playlist-add
12 "p" 'mpc-playlist
13 ">" 'mpc-next
14 "<" 'mpc-prev
15 "R" 'mpc-playlist-delete
16 "RET" 'mpc-select
17 "x" 'mpc-play-at-point)

Down the Rabbit Hole

Keep falling in the rabbit hole of Emacs! Till next time!