Squeeze family and classical music

[sebp]

With SC 7.2.1, splitting artist tags (with a ; or other separator) and combining multi-disk albums is now finally working and I have now started to rip and tag my large classical CD collection for good.

Since you seem to be ripping your CDs to FLAC, you should consider using multiple ARTIST tags rather than one w/ separator.
Non uniqueness of tags in Vorbis comments (that FLAC uses) is a very nice feature, I'm using it with most of my classical/jazz music.

The only feature I am missing is browsing by composer in SC.

See there, Erland plugins are your friends.

[sebp]

bottom line, if one is an iTunes user, cares about sound quality, and wants to use any sort of squeeze device, AIF is the only format.

AIFF is as useless as WAV when it comes to tagging outside the iStuff world.

[azaz44]

Hi again everybody

I wanted to give tagging a try, wanted several times and always got stucked, always just at the beginning. Problems are arising everywhere and I actually didn't even make the first step - tagging some files. It seems to me using tags for classical music is only a dream for now, but maybe I am missing something. I would appreciate comments from people who use tags with some amount of recordings (having more than one recording of a particular work). It seems tagging style is individual thing here, so I wonder how you solve problems in your collections.

I tried to use this guide: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.ph...lassical_music

I tried two taggers - The Godfather and MP3Tag. I guess there must be something better for classical music, but these two allowed me to enter some tags.

Problems:

1. Sorting of the names. The guide suggests using two tags: ARTIST and ARTISTSORT. Besides entering the same data two times, I cannot imagine how it would work if there are more artists than one. They can be separated by colon or, as suggested in this thread, put in many tags. Also what about conductor, shell I add CONDUCTORSORT? COMPOSERSORT? It seems to me the only option is to simply use names like "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus", "Bach, Christian" etc. and live with that. But what do you use?

2. Artists. The guide tells nothing about multiple artists, but there are often many. It is suggested to use some separator and put many in one field, or to use multiple fields with the same name. But then, shell I put signers, pianists, violinist all to the same place? I guess yes, cause there could be any number of any of them (like six pianists playing "The Ride of Valkyries" transcription - extreme example). Well, I would like to know which artist do what. Is it a bass singer or piano player? In some works it is well known, for example I would not suspect Vladimir Horowitz to play Cello in a Sonata for Piano & Cello. But sometimes it's not that obvious and the names not so well known. If I go through entering all these tags (incredible amount of work), then I want to be able to use them, to check who's playing the violin or who's singing in the soprano, because this is the singer I want to listen to more or find more recordings of. But typically there are four signers, so which one is the soprano? Do you have any solution for this?

3. The guide suggests four divisions:

- Composer -> Work -> Song
- Artist,Conductor,Band -> Composer -> Work -> Song
- Composer -> Artist,Conductor,Band -> Work -> Song
- Genre -> Composer -> Work -> Song

These are good examples of how one can access the collection to find some particular work. But in reality, none of them would actually work well enough for me. If I go through selection, I expect to have some recording of one's work at the end, with all movements inside. So I should have one item with several movements, all from the same CD, one recording. Here, in the first example, multiple recordings of the same work are not differentiated. Actually I don't know what suggested plugin would display in this case (as I wrote I always got stuck right at the beginning, didn't try plugins yet), but I cannot imagine it would make any sense. I have multiple recordings of "Requiem" by Mozart, and there's no way I can select which one I want using this particular menu.

The second one seems to be better. But still there are items which are not differentiated by this. Some conductor can record same work several times. Karajan recorded Beethoven symphonies several times. Zimerman recorded Chopin's piano concertos two times. Such recordings could even appear on one CD, if someone releases such to have a comparison. One could possibly add YEAR somewhere to distinguish. But this is not always available (for example in Chopin's Piano Concertos recorded by Hofman, release by VAI). And sometimes even the year might be the same. Schnabel recorded Beethoven's Piano Sonatas and there are multiple versions of these. They are transfered from old tapes and release by different labels - some use more hiss-removing, some less, some different mastering, some are cheaper some more expensive - you have the choice. But then even year of recording is the same. So we would need to differentiate by LABEL as well? Menus get complicated and still we don't know, if we cover everything. Moreover you have to use these YEAR, LABEL, OTHER in all menu setups / scenarios.

The only solution I could find would be to have some special tag, which would be the same for all files of a particular "work-artist-recording-version-label-whatever" (so the thing we normally want to listen to at one time) and unique for the whole collection. Either some random ID, or some readable, unique description of a "version". So all movements of Requiem recorded by Herreweghe in this particular year, released on this particular CD would have some same, but unique value there. But I haven't heard of anyone using such solution.

I just thought even adding the label does not solve the problem, because noone stops the label to release the recording again, but with better mastering for example. Or in different format (DVDA?). I think you get the point what the problem is.

How do you solve this problem in your collections?

------------

Excuse me such long post, but I really got interested. I would be so happy to find out the tagging for classical music can really work. Just got 19 CDs of Mozart Symphonies by Hogwood and have to separate them into directories one for each symphony, rename the files etc. to be able to listen to them in some normal way. Honestly I hate to do this. Bach Cantats by Suzuki are waiting as well. Tagging would be way better Not to mention these CDs which have different works, different composers, but cannot be separated for some reason (like pianist recitals) - these are real problem.
Cheers

[fakarava2]

Hi again everybody

I wanted to give tagging a try, wanted several times and always got stucked, always just at the beginning. Problems are arising everywhere and I actually didn't even make the first step - tagging some files. It seems to me using tags for classical music is only a dream for now, but maybe I am missing something. I would appreciate comments from people who use tags with some amount of recordings (having more than one recording of a particular work). It seems tagging style is individual thing here, so I wonder how you solve problems in your collections.
/../
Cheers

To make short : You are arrived to the limitations of the system.
But you can add your own tags, at least on foobar, and it is easy to complete them with "format from other fields".
I have not yet arrived to the "work" tag, but I can choose between, say, different versions of a N° symphony from a given composer.
It is less easy with Slimserver than with Foobar, but it works. You just need to find an "obsolete" laptop instead of the remote command, and that's all ...at least for my needs.

[sebp]

How do you solve this problem in your collections?

Hi azaz44,

I'm in the process of ripping a 100 CD box set of operas to FLAC, and given I already own some versions of these operas, here are the "rules of thumb" I've ended up with.
I think they should work quite well with other (ie not operas) classical works.


Disambiguation

First, as you said, there's some possibility you own several versions of a single work.

For disambiguation, I put a "key" in the ALBUM tag, next to the work name :
ALBUM="<WORK TITLE> [<CONDUCTOR LAST NAME>/<REC. LOCATION>/<REC. YEAR>]"

e.g. :
ALBUM="La Damnation de Faust [Markevitch/Paris/1959]"
ALBUM="Lucia di Lammermoor [Schippers/studio/1970]"

I don't think I will ever own two versions of the same work by the same conductor, in the same city, during the same year.
That's why I chose this "key", but YMMV.


Note that once you're done with ALBUM disambiguation, it's easy to use this tag with the CustomBrowse plugin.
Rather than using the Composer -> Work -> Song, you could then use a (better imho) Composer -> Work -> Album view.


Ripping destination

When a CD has an album artist, I rip it to <music directory>/<ALBUMARTIST>/<ALBUM> (I may just use the regular album name in that case).

e.g. :
<music directory>/Paul Tortelier/Bach - Les 6 suites pour violoncelle
<music directory>/Hilary Hahn/Brahms & Stravinsky - Violin concertos


When a CD is (part of) a single work, and there's no album artist, I rip it to <music directory>/<COMPOSER>/<ALBUM> (my ripping software takes care of replacing some characters like slashes).

e.g. :
<music directory>/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/Le Nozze di Figaro (Les Noces de Figaro) [Böhm_Berlin_1968]
<music directory>/Gustav Mahler/Symphonie n°2 en ut mineur « Résurrection » [Solti_studio_1966]


And when the album holds several works by several composers, I simply rip it to my "Various Artists" directory.

e.g. :
<music directory>/Various Artists/1812 Overture - Capriccio Italien - Wellington's Victory
<music directory>/Various Artists/Les plus beaux opéras du monde


Advanced tagging

FLAC being used to encode my music, I'm free to use the tags I want.
Even if SqueezeCenter does not natively support most of them at the moment, I'm putting high hopes in the future database schema design to help them being usable.

So, whenever possible, I set these tags :
- ALBUMARTIST : if applicable ("Giuliano Carmignola")
- ALBUM : as seen before
- WORK : name of the work ("Die Zauberflöte (La flûte enchantée)")
- OPUS : opus if applicable ("8", "KV 620")
- MOVEMENT : movement if applicable ("Adagio")
- COMPOSER : regular composer name ("Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart")
- COMPOSERSORT : for sorting composer name ("Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus")*
- CONDUCTOR : regular conductor name if applicable ("Herbert von Karajan")
- CONDUCTORSORT : for sorting conductor name ("Karajan, Herbert von")
- ENSEMBLE : orchestra, use several if required ("London Symphony Orchestra")
- CHOIR : choir if applicable, use several if required ("Chœur Symphonique de Paris")
- CHOIRCHIEF : choir chief if any ("John McCarthy")
- PERFORMER : performers, use as many as needed ("Maria Callas")
- LYRICIST : mainly for operas, use several if required ("Jules Barbier")
- LOCATION : city and location for live recordings ("Milano, Teatro alla Scala")
- DATE : date of recording - not album release ("1954", "1966/03")
- LABEL : recording label ("DECCA")
- GENRE : primary genre ("Classique")
- TYPE : type in genre ("Symphonie", "Opéra", "Concerto")

Most of these tags may be used through CustomScan / CustomBrowse, I think (I'm just too lazy to test them now).

For the "who's playing who/what" question, here's something I'm thinking about (ie not tested yet), since Vorbis comments (seem to) allow free tag names :
- "CASTING <PERFORMER>" : which character is the performer acting - mainly for operas (eg. for my recording of Wagner's Valkyries : "CASTING Jon Vickers"="Siegmund")
- "PLAYING <PERFORMER>" : what's the performer playing ("PLAYING Jon Vickers"="Ténor")


That's all folks.
Hoping this'll help and make some sense (40 CDs remain, it's driving me crazy).

Sébastien

[azaz44]

Thanks Sebastien, that's a lot of good points, and also new things about the opera, which I didn't realize. I don't listen to operas that much - I tried some recordings and seen some of them, but never felt in love. But then, just yesterday, seen Otello and well... I felt in love with opera for good. So this will change I'm sure. So - what I didn't realize before - there are more signers of the same voice (tenor, alto etc.) and singers have roles. Surely it would be great to know who plays who.

About Disambiguation

I love the idea of the key in the album. I just found some album description in the key is a must. This is because some works are published on different CDs in the same form. For example you can have some piano concerto on one CD grouped together with some other concerto of the same pianist, and then you can have the same version of the same concerto, same mastering, same everything on another CD or set of CDs entitled for example "Favorite piano concertos" (like it is with Philips series), or maybe on some "complete edition" of some composer. Then whatever you use for grouping the tracks - composer, work, year, label, anything - the tracks will still get mixed, because it's the same music there. Only album is different.

But anyway, I think I also need some other "key". This is because of possibility of having the same work appearing two times on one CD. I don't have any better example at hand, but I own this CD: http://www.amazon.com/The-Chopin-Con...7552126&sr=8-1 . There are two Chopin's piano concertos there, interview with the pianist and additionally excerpt from Allegro from one of the concertos in some other version. Obviously I don't want this excerpt to be added to the full concerto when playing it.

Also, I can imagine other problematic CDs. For example having different versions of some small forms on one CD's, like songs. Or having the same work in normal version and piano transcription on the same CD. (Or the opposite - having original piano version of the Pictures at the Exhibition, and then orchestrated version).

So it seems to me each work must have some key defined, with a clear and unique description of this "version" of the work. And the "album" key has to be there as well (again: same version of the work can appear on different CDs and only "album" is different then). Of course the "work version" is not needed for opera.

I'll give this a try as soon as I find some time and write what results I got. I will leave the problem of "who's playing who and what" for later then.

For now just a quick question: what tagging tool is best to do this? Is foobar, suggested by fakarava2, a way to go? It would be great if it could handle a lot of files and subdirectories at once (I would assign composer:bach to thousands of files in one directory, and have less work later with these files) and it would be great if it would have some database of values entered and suggest them. So if I type some work name once ("Die Zauberflöte"), next time it would suggest it. This way I can avoid having multiple versions of the same name (like Zauberflöte here, Zauberfloete there). And of course it must allow multiple tags and custom tag names.

Cheers

[sebp]

I'm glad you found something useful in my way of ripping and tagging.

But anyway, I think I also need some other "key". This is because of possibility of having the same work appearing two times on one CD. I don't have any better example at hand, but I own this CD: http://www.amazon.com/The-Chopin-Con...7552126&sr=8-1 . There are two Chopin's piano concertos there, interview with the pianist and additionally excerpt from Allegro from one of the concertos in some other version. Obviously I don't want this excerpt to be added to the full concerto when playing it.

Well, I simply don't rip comment/interview tracks.
Even if I did, I would use the same strategy than for excerpts (that I don't want to listen to either) : use a TYPE=Comment or a custom tag in the file (say "EXCERPT"="1"), that I would filter out.

Also, I can imagine other problematic CDs. For example having different versions of some small forms on one CD's, like songs. Or having the same work in normal version and piano transcription on the same CD. (Or the opposite - having original piano version of the Pictures at the Exhibition, and then orchestrated version).

Once again, you're free to set any custom tag you want, and filter them out.
What about a "DERIVATIVE" tag ?

So it seems to me each work must have some key defined, with a clear and unique description of this "version" of the work. And the "album" key has to be there as well (again: same version of the work can appear on different CDs and only "album" is different then). Of course the "work version" is not needed for opera.

It's not that easy, even operas can have several versions !
For example, take Boris Godunov : Mussorgski wrote a first version in 1869, and another one in 1872.
FWIW, I would use a custom VERSION tag to keep these apart.

For now just a quick question: what tagging tool is best to do this? Is foobar, suggested by fakarava2, a way to go?

Windows not being my cup of tea, I can't help you here.

It would be great if it could handle a lot of files and subdirectories at once (I would assign composer:bach to thousands of files in one directory, and have less work later with these files)

I think most serious taggers will.

and it would be great if it would have some database of values entered and suggest them. So if I type some work name once ("Die Zauberflöte"), next time it would suggest it. This way I can avoid having multiple versions of the same name (like Zauberflöte here, Zauberfloete there).

Very nice feature I wish my tagger had.

[azaz44]

Hi again
First some answers, than report from the battlefield.

Well, I simply don't rip comment/interview tracks.
Even if I did, I would use the same strategy than for excerpts (that I don't want to listen to either) : use a TYPE=Comment or a custom tag in the file (say "EXCERPT"="1"), that I would filter out.

Of course I want these things to be included somewhere, not filtered out. Comment / interview is not a problem, but this excerpt is. But I tried with WORKVERSION tag, which is like "Hogwood, 1997" (for Mozart Symphonies I mentioned) and it seems to work well. This is also more descriptive to me than the album name, which includes more information, like composer, so is long to read.

It's not that easy, even operas can have several versions !
For example, take Boris Godunov : Mussorgski wrote a first version in 1869, and another one in 1872.
FWIW, I would use a custom VERSION tag to keep these apart.

Of course there are different versions with opera as well. But I think these would appear always on separate albums (operas are not release together with other works), so your ALBUM tag separates them well (so you can have "(1989 version)" in the album somewhere). Well, unless someone releases an opera recording, and adds - as a bonus track - some different version of one aria, differently composed or performed.

Now about my try

I tried with 19CD box of Mozart symphonies by Hogwood. It seems to be a good start - a lot of music to organize and easy enough - no soloists for now, just works, composer, conductor, orchestra.

Setting up the plugins was not that easy, but they work at the end. I installed CustomScan, CustomBrowse and MultiLibrary and mostly followed the guide from the wiki, for browsing classical music.

I made one menu for custom browse, which is:

COMPOSER - WORK - WORKVERSION - ALBUM

And well, new problems are arising Sooner or later I'll need some solutions for the following:

1. With all this WORKVERSION and ALBUM fuss I hoped the plugin will have some option to not show this menu item if there's only one choice available. So I choose composer, work, and then I'm directly at the list of tracks / movements, if there's only one version and one album I own. If there are more, then I have to select it. But I cannot find any option to do this. And the menus will get more deep at the end. Am I missing something?

2. For some composers, I have maybe only three works recorded. For others a massive amount - hundreds of works to scroll through. A way to go would be to add GENRE somewhere (Symphony, String Quartet, Opera). So I choose COMPOSER - GENRE - WORK and so on. But It makes no sense to have GENRE for these composers, which I own three works in total. Is there any way for the menu item to appear only, if the amount of items to be displayed is greater than XX? Like, I put genre there, but it should be displayed only if the number of works is >= 20. If it is less, I get a list of works instead. Any idea?

3. Similar problem. I have 104 symphonies of Haydn coming from one CD box, one conductor and orchestra. Having them in one menu is of course a problem, imagine scrolling to the one with number 50. One solution would be to add some submenu which would divide them to groups of - let's say - 20 items, but again - the menu showing up only if there are too many items. Any idea how to do this?

Another idea - I can use some WORKGROUP tag, so I can put some useful information there (ie. "Paris Symphonies", "London Symphonies", "Early Symphonies 1-10" etc.) and thus get some division which makes more sense, than just splitting for groups of 25 items each. Then I can add WORKGROUP to the menus. But then again - I only want to select it if it is needed. For Beethoven's nine symphonies I don't need this. So I need some solution to p. 1 or p. 2 first. The same problem will show up with Bach Cantatas, there are about 200 of them.

I'd love to get some help about all these problems.

I also met some minor problems which I wonder if you know any solution for, but these are far less important to me. These are:

- the customscan seems to hang slim server completely for the time of scanning,
- I put "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus" in the composer tag, but I always get "-Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus" in menus everywhere (it adds "-").

Any ideas?


UPDATE: I found why I get "-Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus". It is taken from some other CD, where it is in this form, and SqueezeCenter groups it together with the one without "-". Although in this other CD it is placed as ARTIST, not CONDUCTOR, so I'm not sure why it's used at all, but I know where to look for.

[erland]

1. With all this WORKVERSION and ALBUM fuss I hoped the plugin will have some option to not show this menu item if there's only one choice available. So I choose composer, work, and then I'm directly at the list of tracks / movements, if there's only one version and one album I own. If there are more, then I have to select it. But I cannot find any option to do this. And the menus will get more deep at the end. Am I missing something?

2. For some composers, I have maybe only three works recorded. For others a massive amount - hundreds of works to scroll through. A way to go would be to add GENRE somewhere (Symphony, String Quartet, Opera). So I choose COMPOSER - GENRE - WORK and so on. But It makes no sense to have GENRE for these composers, which I own three works in total. Is there any way for the menu item to appear only, if the amount of items to be displayed is greater than XX? Like, I put genre there, but it should be displayed only if the number of works is >= 20. If it is less, I get a list of works instead. Any idea?

3. Similar problem. I have 104 symphonies of Haydn coming from one CD box, one conductor and orchestra. Having them in one menu is of course a problem, imagine scrolling to the one with number 50. One solution would be to add some submenu which would divide them to groups of - let's say - 20 items, but again - the menu showing up only if there are too many items. Any idea how to do this?

Most Custom Browse menus have a static menu dept, the only exception is the "Tags" menu (based on the "Dynamic Tags" menu type).

The "Tags" menu will let you browse your library in any order you like but the disadvantage is that you need to select what to browse next at each menu level which still creates a bit deep menu hierarchy.

The "Tags" menu requires you to use both "Custom Tag" and "Mixed Tag" scanning modules.

It's possible to create more dynamic menus also for the rest of the menus, but it requires A LOT of configuration and you will need to manually customize the menu XML configuration. The "Genres/Subgenres" menu type is an example of a more dynamic menu. I wouldn't recommend trying this unless you have worked with XML and SQL before and is ready to learn.

Another idea - I can use some WORKGROUP tag, so I can put some useful information there (ie. "Paris Symphonies", "London Symphonies", "Early Symphonies 1-10" etc.) and thus get some division which makes more sense, than just splitting for groups of 25 items each. Then I can add WORKGROUP to the menus. But then again - I only want to select it if it is needed. For Beethoven's nine symphonies I don't need this. So I need some solution to p. 1 or p. 2 first. The same problem will show up with Bach Cantatas, there are about 200 of them.

The dynamic behavior you are looking for is only somewhat possible through the "Tags" menu or a menu based on the "Dynamic Tags" menu template.

I'd love to get some help about all these problems.

- the customscan seems to hang slim server completely for the time of scanning,

Which scanning modules have you enabled to automatically be executed during automatic rescans in Custom Scan ?
Is it just the Custom Tag and Mixed Tag scanning modules or do you also have Last FM or Amazon scanning modules enabled ?

Last FM/Amazon modules will cause SqueezeCenter hang and at the moment there is no easy way around that.

Custom Tag should not completely hang SqueezeCenter but it will slow down SqueezeCenter a bit. It works the same as scanning did in SlimServer 6.3 and earlier.

Mixed Tag might hang SqueezeCenter but it should be a fairly short time unless you have an extremely large library.

If the Custom Tags scanning module completely hangs SqueezeCenter, it would be interesting to know if it is during the whole scanning process of this module or if it's just in the beginning or just in the end. You can see if the Custom Tags scanning module is currently running by looking in the Custom Scan settings page during scanning.

[azaz44]

Most Custom Browse menus have a static menu dept, the only exception is the "Tags" menu (based on the "Dynamic Tags" menu type).

The "Tags" menu will let you browse your library in any order you like but the disadvantage is that you need to select what to browse next at each menu level which still creates a bit deep menu hierarchy.

The "Tags" menu requires you to use both "Custom Tag" and "Mixed Tag" scanning modules.

It's possible to create more dynamic menus also for the rest of the menus, but it requires A LOT of configuration and you will need to manually customize the menu XML configuration. The "Genres/Subgenres" menu type is an example of a more dynamic menu. I wouldn't recommend trying this unless you have worked with XML and SQL before and is ready to learn.

Hi Erland and thank you for good starting points. It gets more and more complicated, but I already spent some time playing with and tagging, so let me see how far I can go. I have some knowledge about XML and SQL.

I checked both examples and "Genres/Subgenres" seems to be some help for me. Using similar way I created menu for "Composer -> Genre -> Work -> WorkVersion -> [tracks] in a way the WorkVersion is only shown, if more than one choice is available. I did this by putting two menus as a WorkVersion, one is showing all WORKVERSION items, another one is showing all tracks (like it is in Genres/Subgenres). The first part is only displayed, if there are more than one WORKVERSION, the second part in the opposite case. This is done by adding a check to WHERE clause, which does SELECT subquery to see how many WORKVERSIONs we have. And well, it works great so far. I think I can use this for other problems as well, like the one with genres shown or not, dependant on number of works.

But I wonder if this is a way to go, or is there any other trick? I wonder, because this way everytime I use this trick at some menu level, I get two menu branches which needs to be made separately - this leads to a long and complicated XML file.

Or shell I rather investigate Dynamic Tags (did not check how they are made yet)?

Which scanning modules have you enabled to automatically be executed during automatic rescans in Custom Scan ?
Is it just the Custom Tag and Mixed Tag scanning modules or do you also have Last FM or Amazon scanning modules enabled ?

It seems to be different today, so maybe it was some false alarm. Maybe because my library was never scanned before. I only run CustomScan and MixedScan. The library has about 25000 files. It runs this way:

- running custom scan hangs the server for about 1 minute (no webpage updates, the squeezebox clock and display hangs). Then it works fine, and the scanning is running for some longer time.

- running mixed scan hangs for about one minute, that it works about one minute, than it hangs for about two minutes, then it seems to work again.

I would need to make detailed test if you need this info, because it takes some time. When mixedscan hangs, it is mysqld process taking cpu, not the squeezecenter.

Cheers