Classical music

[DavidAdamson]

I'm sorry if this topic has been covered before, but I have looked and i can't find a clear answer (maybe I'm stupid). I'm trying to create a library of music, mostly classical, from my old LPs and not quite so old CDs. I have saved the files hierarchically in Windows, for example My Music\Beethoven\String quartets\Op27 No 1\Italian Quartet\1 Allegro.flac
In MM3 (Gold) I would like to be able to search by each of:
composer (Beethoven), ensemble type (String quartet), work (Op 27 No1), performer (Italian Quartet)
I do NOT want to find a list of several different tracks all called "1 Allegro.flac" which come form several different pieces, all of which have an Allegro first movement. I would like it if I could search on String quartets and bring up a list of the quartets I have by composer and then by work eg Shostakovich 13th quartet, Schubert 10th quartet. Again, at this stage I don't want to see individual movements.
What do I need to do to achieve all this? I understand that it's SQLite which underlies MM3 which is a relational database so it shouldn't be too hard! I've tried Magic Nodes which, at present, don't work (not even the example ones).
All help gratefully received. Is there scope for an idiot's guide to this problem?

[Lowlander]

The first question is how do you store this information in the tags?

You have the location node if you wish to navigate the folder structure you maintain. The build in search however only lists tracks. It can't list works, ensembles, etc.

[DavidAdamson]

At present, some of it's in the tags and some isn't. What I described was a directory structure. I could welcome some advice about how best to store it in the tags, especially since it doesn't seem straightforward to work out what some mean. For example, what's the difference between "artist" and "album artist"?
Initially, I have used "album" to store what I'd call the work ie the piece of music. However, that's not ideal because then it doesn't seem easy to view just the works (albums) of a particular composer.
However, I think that getting the right information into sensible places in the tags would be a big step forwards so, yes, suggestions welcome!

[Lowlander]

Album Artist is the artist(s) responsible for the Album. The Artist is the artist(s) responsible for the track. The Album Artist is used to associated tracks to a specific album which is useful when the album has tracks from various artists.

You'll probably find that MediaMonkey doesn't have all the fields you'd like to use for classical music. For those fields that are missing you can use the Custom fields in MediaMonkey. There are 5 of them and you can rename them in the MediaMonkey options. Be aware that Custom fields only work with MediaMonkey though.

You can use Auto-Tag from Filename to get the folder/filename values into tags. This is specially useful if you have a well organized and standardized folder structure. Once you have tagged the files you find that the search is more useful as well as MagicNodes (if you resolve it's issues).

[DavidAdamson]

Thanks for that - I'll try tonight if I have time. However, i suspect that I will still have to ask how to make the tags I want appear in the navigation pane and exclude the ones which are useless (like the one that shows lots of tracks called "1 Allegro.flac" without any way of sorting them).

[Davo]

This is how i set up the tags for most of my classical music. esp multi movement works like concertos, symphonies etc.
Tags from external sources are pretty useless. Info is rarely in the correct tag & there is no standard naming conventions. Bach can be J. Bach, JS Bach, Bach, Johann. It is time consuming setting up your own tags but once it's done the MM database & standard Library views work really well.

Example - Mahlers Symphony No 1

Title = 01. Slow Plodding. In the beginning very comfortably
Artist = Frankfurt Radio Sym Orch
Genre = Classical
Album = Mahler: Sym # 1 (FRSO)
Album Artist = Frankfurt Radio Sym Orch
Composer = Mahler, Gustav
Conductor = Inbal, Eliahu

I use a separate Library filter for Classical Music with the rule Genre = Classical. This way i can use the standard Library nodes to easily see all works by artist, composer or conductor.

It helps to use a consistent standard for naming & numbering including abbreviations (Classical data can be very long winded). Makes sorting, viewing & maintaining the info a lot easier.

[DavidAdamson]

Thanks very much for those replies. I feel I'm making some progress. It would still be nice to be able to look at a genre without having to go through a sub-level of artist. For example, I have a genre "String Quartet" and it would be nice to be able to see all string quartets there (or maybe have the next level list as composer). Instead, the next level list is of artists. I dare say that can be sorted, however!

[nosedog]

MyCustomNodes is another good script to look at for creating your own preferred ways of looking at your music. I find MediaMonkey's "filters" somewhat underwhelming and prefer to use MyCustomNodes for this purpose. Using MCN, you can create useful heirarchies like Composer-SubGenre-Artist or SubGenre-Composer-Title, or something else, or both and more! It's a lot of planning and a bit of fiddling (and a lot of making sure your tags are in order) but I think it's the best way for you to go.

Regarding genre, I prefer to use things like "Chamber", "Baroque", "Contemporary", etc. although I never really put those to use and probably should just call everything "Classical" for simplicity. To select all classical music in a MyCustomNodes node, I use the condition "Genre in ('Classical', 'Baroque', 'Chamber', etc.)". It sounds like you would want to store info like "String Quartet" or "Symphony" or "Song" etc. in a tag, be it Genre or a Custom tag.

Here is a typical example of my preferred naming scheme:
* Album Artist: Beethoven, Ludwig van
* Artist: Quartetto Italiano
* Album: Complete String Quartets
* Title: Op.127 in E flat - II. Adagio, ma non troppo e molto cantabile

I haven't bothered with Composer or Conductor, though I probably should. I put the composer in AlbumArtist because, as far as I'm concerned, it's Beethoven's album. That might seem weird, but if you look at a typical classical CD cover, I think the record company agrees with me. The composer's name is displayed prominently; the performer is a minor detail in comparison.

For finding the music you want to listen to, or for browsing a subset of it, I think regular searching is generally the best way to go. E.g. searching for "string quartet" will show you all your string quartets; adding "shost" to the search string will narrow it down to Shostakovich ones, etc.

I'm rambling here, but it's useful to read how others arrange their collections, and although mine is far from uniformly organised, it's a few steps along that road.

I just thought of a MyCustomNodes scheme you could employ (as a start).

Code: Select all

;-----------------------------------------------
[Classical]
;-----------------------------------------------
icon=Album
trackCriteria="Genre = 'Classical'"

[String Quartets]
parent="Classical"
level=Composer
level=Album
trackCriteria="Genre = 'Classical'"
trackCriteria="Album LIKE %String Quartet%"

[Symphonies]
parent="Classical"
level=Composer
level=Album
level=Artist
trackCriteria="Genre = 'Classical'"
trackCriteria="Album LIKE %Symphony%"

I hope you can understand the sort of view that would provide you. There would be nodes like Classical/String Quartets/Beethoven/String Quartets Op. 18/Julliard Quartet. No individual tracks would appear in the node, but they would in the main display. (Incidentally, I use the "Album art with details" view exclusively.)

There are all sorts of options available to you. That's the beauty of MediaMonkey! (And most especially, the scripts that clever people write for it.)

You seem to want to view your collection by piece, not by album per se. In which case, you could use a Custom tag to contain the piece name (of which there could be several per album) and then work that tag into your custom node setup. It's more work for you in tagging, but probably worth it in terms of being able to look at your collection as a set of multi-movement pieces instead of albums.

Good luck! I'd be interested to know how you go. You appear to be a more dedicated classical collector than me, so there will be a lot for me to learn from you once you find a good way to organise your collection.

[Davo]

I use the Grouping field for categories like "String Quartets" or "Classical Guitar" that i don't consider as Genres. Then i set up separate Libraries for each grouping eg (filter - Grouping equals String Quartet) That way i can easily view my String Quartets by Artist, Composer etc. I only bother doing this where the size of the collection warrants it.

I don't bother breaking the Classical genre down to Baroque, Romantic, Classical etc. Mainly because I only have a handful of composers in each of those Genres, eg, most of my Baroque collection is Bach & Handel so i can find them easily enough by Composer under the main Classical Library. I also have a separate Library just for Bach.
If my tastes change & my collection keeps growing i might have to consider using more categories. The good thing about MM is it gives you the tools to make these changes easily.