How do I get iTunes to read from my external drive?

Ok, before you post this link http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748 please read this. That link only seems to give advice if you have your music on your computer's hard drive and you want to transfer it all to another drive. My problem is that all of my music is currently on an external drive. There is nothing to transfer or consolidate from my computer. I've gone into the preferences and set the iTunes music folder to the location on my external drive. The part about consolidating doesn't seem applicable in my case. So now that I've set the location of my iTunes music folder why isn't anything showing up in my iTunes library? Why can't I play any music?

So have any of this "external" music ever been added to iTunes? If not, go to File>Add to Library. Then navigate to the external hard-drive folder that contains the music.

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