Classical Music Tree

[Pietercape]

Hi,
Well Done to the Developers for MM4 ! Now that I have a better understanding of the new features (and some older ones that I did not know of) I am enjoying the Monkey more than ever!

My library is mainly Classical and with the possibility to customize Collections I have been scouring the forum for a way to change the Media Tree to be a more logical fit to Classical Collections, to my mind anyway. I have not found a solution.

What will be great is the ability to have a "Composition" entry in "File Properties" and for it to be possible to customize the media tree in the Classical Music Collection to use "Composition" as an alternative to "Album" in the sub-node. In other words instead of having Composer/Album (the present default) one can elect to have Composer/Composition.

For my Classical Collection I selected these nodes - Location, Artist, Composer, Conductor and Genre. Under Composer MM by default (and Logically) lists the composers. Clicking on the composer displays Album, the default. I have scoured the forum but cannot find a way to change this to "Composition"

I am using a custom field to have "Composition" as a column. MM does not make this easy. When adding a new CD I need to go to the Classification Tab in the Properties Dialogue to enter the name of the Composition. The box is very small and Composition names are usually quite long.

In MM3 I used Album as my Composition node. This gave me a tree which showed composer - composition. Even then I had to prefix the Composition name with the name of the Composer in order to be able to make sense of a listing in the Album tab.

There are occasions where Album is useful in Classical such as in Compilations where you have say 15+ tracks with many different composers and it would be great to be able to use it. As it is now I cannot use "Album"

Any ideas or support for these changes from the Classical community?

[Lowlander]

You can use the MagicNodes addon to create custom tree nodes. You can enter custom fields in the Filelisting itself so you can make it as wide as possible.

I'm failing to find evidence that Composition is a tag supported by tagging standards (such as ID3).

[Otello]

You may cuastomize the Summary for your needs, in Option/Playback rules, click on Classical Music and edit the 2 "Art View" lines.
For instance, I use:

$if(<Composer>, <Composer> - )<Album>
$if(<Conductor>,<Conductor>)$If(<Artist>, - <Artist>,)$If(<Date>, - <Date>,) $If(<Publisher>, - <Publisher>,)

About the "Composition" field, I think it's not a good idea to use a custom field for one of the most important tags...
I do use the Album field for the composition, as I don't care too much about the original album, but if you do, I'd suggest to use the "Original Title" tag.

[Pietercape]

Thanks for the responses Lowlander and Otello.

I downloaded Magicnodes and read all I could about it but it seems to be such a compromise. As I understand it I will not be able to change the structure of the existing <composer> <album> node but will have to create a separate node and subnode. For an oldtimer with no scripting experience this seemed daunting.

From Lowlanders' comment about ID3 tagging standards I am concluding that tagging in MM is dependent on or closely tied to the ID3 tagging frames that I found on the net. Thinking about it now it seems logically so. Thanks - something new that I learned today.

Otello, Thanks for both your suggestions especially the one concerning the ID3 tag "Original Title" That is what I will change to, much better than the Custom route.

As always the response from the community is great, thanks for your help.

[Lowlander]

Yes, MagicNodes creates new nodes. You can ask for help in the MagicNodes thread to create your own.

MediaMonkey tries to adhere to tagging standards for compatibility with other programs. I don't know if the tagging standards provide for a composition tag (they might).

[Pietercape]

I checked the ID3.Org website where they list the standard tags and you are correct, there is no tag provided for "Composition"

Too bad!

[arthurb]

Hello Pietercape,

I have a feeling that what I am about to say will not be quite what you wanted to hear, but for what it's worth...

I too use MM with a lot of classical music, and I think it is the only player/organiser which allows a reasonable organisation of Classical stuff. I had an issue with the layout I wanted and felt I needed to introduce the concept of the 'work', which is, I think, the same as your 'composition'. The only way I have been able to introduce it to MM is to use the 'Album' as the 'work'. If a CD has two works on it, say Beethoven Piano Concertos 1 & 2, the CD must be ripped twice (I usually use dBpoweramp's CD-Ripper, but it should be the same for MM I guess) so that you get two 'albums', one for each of the concertos. In addition, much of my digital music is digitised from LP using a CD recorder in my Hi-Fi, and it is straightforward when tagging the newly recorded files to name the album as the work, and this should be true for music you have already ripped (I would think). In addition to this, and equally important, I ditched the rather silly catch-all 'classical' genre, and always substitute my own when ripping or editing the audio files; these are the usual genres in common use, for example: Concertos, Symphonies, Chamber etc. You would of course set these to suit yourself, but once chosen the categories must be adhered to rigidly. It all seems very complex, but once you get used to it there is no problem really.


I thus end up with a listing, of the following form:

Composer => Genre => Work & Artist/s* => Track number & Title. * Note, I use the [i]Album and Album Artist[/i] combination from MM because it then sorts and groups the files properly.


This is matched by the folder/file layout on disk, which is:

Composer => Genre => Work => Artist/s => Track # and title file (i.e. the actual audio file).

I hope this is of interest and I apologise if it is not...

[Pietercape]

Hi arthurb,

Thank for your reply and suggestion. The solution you propose is in fact what I am using i.e. I am using "Album" for the composition and in order to identify the composer when using a portable media player I use the composer as a prefix to the composition. I end up with "Bach Brandenburg Concerto #1 BWV1046 B104" as the Album in MM, the B104 being the number I allocated to the CD for storage purposes. On my player this will scroll and I will have the full identity of what I am listening to.

To my mind having Composer/Composition nodes in the tree would have been "nice to have" but I guess we also do not want bloatware!

I tried Magicnodes as suggested by Lowlander but the program does not seem to be able to change the default tree structure but instead it seems to me that it creates another seperate tree as part of the default tree. My technical skills do not extend to code writing or editing besides, it reduces listening time!

I have adopted the suggestion by Otello and am using the "Original Title" tag under the "Details" tab of the "Properties" dialogue box to record the CD title. I am sure that if I persist I will be able to use Magicnodes to list "Original Title" if I want the CD Title listed in the tree.

Good luck with the digitising of your Vinyl collection. I still have about 150 lp's to go, a job I reserve for winter. I use Audacity to record and clean the recording but it is time-consuming work as I am sure you know!