Is there a way to choose a song without altering play mode?

Question

I recently got an Ipod Nano 16g and its my first i-product. I gotta say, the whole searchable database method of organizing songs is kind of counterintuitive to me, especially in how it relates to play mode and song searches.
For example, I downloaded the recent series of Mp3's from Phish's 3 days in VA. There are three different albums, each with multiple discs. If I use the album browsing feature where you tilt the thing sideways to look through the albums and their cover art, its easy enough to find the first of the three albums.
Ok, great, it plays. But it only plays the first disc worth. I want it to continue to the next one.
Is there any way to enable a mode so that no matter what song you choose to play, it will "just continue to the next song in the 'all songs' playlist"?
That's all I really want to do. I have a lot of MP3's and unless I'm listening to a specific album, I like keeping it on "random". Sometimes I want to listen to a specific song, but no matter what method of search I do for that song, it seems to change the play mode.
Like, I search by album as described above, it will only play that album. If I search by artist, it only plays songs from that artist. If I search for a song, it only plays that one song, even if I have random mode enabled. If I go into the "now playing" playlist, I can click forward and backward until I come across the song I want but that is crazy tedious when there's 2k songs to go through.
All I want to do is be able to search for a particular song, play that song, then continue on with what it was doing before, either "all songs" or songs from a particular playlist. Every other media player I've ever encountered, including my car stereo (via USB flash drive) works that way. I'd set up the ipod in "disk mode" for my car, but then I couldn't use the ipod as an ipod, not to mention the car stero recognizing the ipod as an ipod so I couldn't access the songs anyway.
I'm hoping there's something simple I've overlooked, maybe one of the menu options I don't fully understand.
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

There are several points in your post.
I like keeping it on "random".
If you want to play any list in shuffle mode (which is random order), go to the Settings screen on the iPod and set Shuffle to Songs.
Ok, great, it plays. But it only plays the first disc worth. I want it to continue to the next one.
In iTunes, you can create a new playlist. You do so by clicking the + (plus) sign at the bottom left corner of the iTunes window (or from the File menu). Name the playlist appropriately. Put all the songs you want (in this case the songs in this collection) in the playlist, by dragging and dropping them (to the playlist) from the main iTunes music library. After syncing the iPod, instead of playing the album, play the playlist.
You can also change the way this particular collection is categorized in iTunes. Go to the main Music listing under LIBRARY in the iTunes sidebar. Click on the list heading for Artist (or Album ) so that you can see all of the songs from this collection together. You can edit what iTunes has in the album field for each song so iTunes that considers all the songs to be in one album, if you want to do something like that. How the songs are organized on the iPod depends on how they are organized in iTunes.
it will "just continue to the next song in the 'all songs' playlist"?
You will have to show a list on the iPod (either a playlist or a by-artist list or a by-album list) that shows ALL the songs you want to eventually play. Then the iPod will play that list, either sequentially or in shuffled order. If you want it to continue playing after playing through the list, you can set, on the iPod's Settings screen, Repeat to All.
All I want to do is be able to search for a particular song, play that song, then continue on with what it was doing before
I think creating playlists is the answer. Then you'll get your favorite songs.
However, if you want to pick a starting songs and make it play continuously through your entire library randomly, its
Music -> Songs -> pick song to play
To make it play that list in shuffle mode, set the Shuffle setting to Songs.
If you just want to start a shuffled sequence at a random song, select +Shuffle Songs+ from the iPod's main screen. With the 4th gen nano, you should also be able to shake it to start a shuffled sequence. This plays all of your songs in a random order.
There is also the Genius feature, where you can choose a starting song and let the iPod create a playlist of 25 songs that +work well+ with that starting song. A very cool feature I use often.