I've struggled with this myself, interested to see where it goes.Any substantive thoughts on it?
- I would definitely split Pop from Rock -
Then again, I would consider all of this:
Electronic
Hip Hop
Jazz
Reggae
Rock
Soundtrack
Categories that imo fall under the pop...
Soundtrack
I've struggled with this myself, interested to see where it goes.Any substantive thoughts on it?
Nope. No typo.
Pop for me is no music genre in and for itself, but can be anything that is successful.
- I would definitely split Pop from Rock - so the root Categories would look somewhat like so for my usage:
Electronic
Hip Hop
Jazz
Pop
Reggae
Rock
Soundtrack
World
Yes, just don't have time to get them in order yetNo hurries. Quality trumps quantity.
I can subdivide my electronic music into aggrotech, futurepop, darkwave, house, ambient, and more and probably have a decent amount of each.
On the other hand, I could probably have one category each for blues and reggae and leave it at that.
Does that mean you don't have a fixed list of genre categories and genres, but that you try to adapt when you come across music that doesn't fit into your current system?yes for me. I regularly discover connections / cross pollinations between eras/genres/styles/locales that change how I perceive a given genre or track, which I thought deserved a specific tag. In light of this new info/discovery, I will adapt/change/add as necessary. Meaning yes, the categories are constantly evolving even just on (or because of) a subjective level.
I'm not at my computer currently, but I will say that I think how finely you slice your genres depends a lot on your personal taste. I can subdivide my electronic music into ...Same for me.
On the other hand, I could probably have one category each for blues and reggae and leave it at that.
I thinks that's our different trains of thought. I am attempting to explain the system that works for me.
Whereas you want to define one with the broadest possible appeal (from your background/angle with a library / listening preference where "pop" seems to play a big role) (?).
What I was meant in the other thread was only regarding Pop being a difficult category (similar to Soundtracks & World, all due to different reasons) and that it should be separated from Rock when it comes to main categories. And offered my approach how I use Pop (which is probably not very popular... :D), and how/why I use the World category, in absence of a better idea/system...
- I use the genre field for everything including Genre Categories, Genres, SubGenres, Styles, Continents, Cities, and for completely made up rubbish names that are only meaningfull to me.
So while all opinions and discussions are honestly interesting, I would hope it helps and results in possibly improving my own current 'fixed schedule', and perhaps also produce some blueprint that is beneficial to other users. (in general)
Such a schedule will surely need to change a bit over time, but there needs to be some basic foundation to build upon.
You are not using the genre tag for genres, not using the country and location tags for countries and locations, and not using the keywords tag for keywords.I am using the Genre field for genres.... and for a good percentage of the music I am interesting in, location is a genre/sound defining factor. But, for many others, it is not.
If that works for you, that's the only thing that matters.Aye.
As a huge metalhead, I break up Pop, Rock, and Metal into different categories.
So, anyone with interest in the matter, and knowledge of, and expertise in specific genres, share your thoughts?
If other users prefer them split up, it's rather easy for them to make that adjustment to my list.
So, while I can't argue with anything you say, a sheet like this requires some serious compromises to be made to make it practical in use.
Since you are a metalhead...
If you have some time to waste, could you take a look at the metal department of my list?
Do you find it acceptable, or are there mistakes or oversights?
t.i.a.!
Oh, yeah I have my own list that I use, and I agree that compromises have to be made on lists like this because you could easily end up with things that straddle two completely different genres that aren't even remotely related on a genre/subgenre scale haha.
I would treat Blues as part of R&B, or its own category, personally. At least in the US there's a certain implicit idea that folk (and country) is "white people's music" and Blues/R&B is "Black people's music". I'm not saying that's right, but it's a thing. I mean, the early billboard charts called African American music "race records", before switching to "R&B" around 1949.
Glancing through your chart now, I question Industrial as a separate category. Most of what I know of as Industrial would fall under Electronic or EDM (I'm not sure about EDM as a separate category from Electronic, either... but this is why I dislike genres!)
Black vs. white music is something that in my opinion is impossible to use as a factor in such a genre list.
But I had the impression that at least in the beginning of the 'movement', there was also Industrial music that could not be placed under either classical, rock, electronic, etc.
I think there's a very, very small amount of Industrial music that's made of samples of non-instrumental "industrial" sounds and so forth. These days it's hard to tell where the line is between industrial, ebm, and synthpop, though. Take Aesthetic Perfection, who describes his music as Industrial Pop: https://aestheticperfection.bandcamp.com/
Americana is where it all kind of runs together. Lucinda Williams is a great example, who has early explicitly blues recordings and explicitly country recordings, and now does something that could be described as "alt country" or "blues folk" or something else, but usually just gets labeled Americana.
(I'm not sure about EDM as a separate category from Electronic, either... but this is why I dislike genres!)
- Added some missing Metal genres, and revised some namings and positions.
(thanks smann!)
I sent you a message in response to your message, but I'm not showing a sent message to you.
... (I'm not sure about EDM as a separate category from Electronic, either... but this is why I dislike genres!) ...I gave it a thought to merge EDM and Electronic in one main category, but then I quickly remembered another reason for me not doing that.
I''m agnostic on the idea of two top level genres,You weren't a few posts back?
but Aggrotech, Futurepop, and Dark Electro would all be sub genres of electro-industrial in my mind
I''m agnostic on the idea of two top level genres, but Aggrotech, Futurepop, and Dark Electro would all be sub genres of electro-industrial in my mind
- since a genre is a name (imo), shouldn't all be in capitals ? i.e. Canadian Blues instead Canadian blues ? Another subjective bit probably... :D
- I would definitely split Pop from Rock
@smann (or other interested metalheads)
I'm doing a last check on my sheet
Mathcore and Metalcore...
Taking the restrictions and intentions of my sheet into consideration, should they be under Heavy Metal, or should I put them one level up, besides Heavy Metal?
(I am tilted towards the latter myself)
edit:
The same about Progressive metal (Prog-metal)
It looks like a mix (fusion genre) of rock and metal, so it may also be a candidate to take out from under Heavy Metal?
... I'm of the mindset that once a subgenre becomes so prominent, then it becomes a legit genre ...
... Metalcore is so massive and one of the most popular styles, that I would 100% put it as its own genre ...
I am using the Genre field for genres.... and for a good percentage of the music I am interesting in, location is a genre/sound defining factor. But, for many others, it is not.
As locale shapes the musics' sound design & structure in many important cases for me, I want to treat it as such as well within a genre taxonomy system that attempts to categorize musical structure & sound traditions.
For me, everything under genre-category, genre, and sub-genre should aim to be strictly genre related.
So, no locations, no keywords, no styles, etc.
There are dedicated tags for those.
Hm, I'll have to retreat from taking that strict position on locations.
Well, probably not with regards to popular music, but now I'm struggling with Folk, Traditional, Country, Indigenous, Ethnic, etc., I find it is going to be impossible not use names of continents, countries and regions.
(some specific geographic, and some variations of cultural/ethnic/geographic)
All the best for the effort with your genre sheet - but, don't be too hard on it/yourself. Especially if you have not much use for regional/traditional yourself...!
- the World/Folk areas is probably one of the most complex, and as wikipedia states "World music's inclusive nature and elasticity as a musical category may pose some obstacles to a universal definition..."
So here's my personal take on it in relation to my music library, but I am far from a specialist on this...:
Since most music culture developed within a cultural region/locale (up until ~20-40 years ago at least...), I would probably, for my own use, tie some of these to continents/lands/cities (primarily for genres that are tied to a specific region/locale as well). Which in turn opens up the olde "what is folk" & "what is world music" issue/debate...
But as for those 2 you/I mentioned, which are both tied to a locale, and if sticking to 3 classes is mandatory woudl probably be this for me as an example:
World / Europe / Flamenco
and
World / Carribean / Compas
But, there's pretty much infinite further clusters when one goes down to locale...i.e. West London VS East London (one could split Grime tracks up based on that...) or Durban VS Cape Town (Gqom & Zef), for which one would need at least 4 parent groups to describe it in this system... like:
World / Africa / South Africa / Durban / Gqom
Or a few others that sit in the root of your list, this would probably be my approach:
World / Africa / Ghana / Highlife
World / Europe / Spain / Flamenco
World / Europe / Portugal / Fado
Which is why I was arguing for a free taxonomy system in the other thread... and hoping I'd only need to define this in a complex xml once, and immediately have a track tagged with 'Fado' placed in it's taxonomic curtural/locale context (as I could then define in the xml...).
But yes, it's a nearly impossible task to tackle objectively, and discogs as well as many others are struggling on this (imo, especially with the world/folk music part...) as well, or have given up and simply use gigantic umbrella terms...
Thanks ThY, that's a great write-up.
It will surely be good and valuable food for thought for others that struggle with handling genres.
The most important thing is probably that you have a system where you can find and listen to the music that you want to listen to at that moment.
On a strictly personal note and opinion, I myself wouldn't place Acid-jazz under Jazz, and I wouldn't put Abba under Adult contemporary, but those are all personal choices, and there is no 'correct'.
Have you looked at: https://rateyourmusic.com/genres
They helped me a lot in understanding and deciding on genres and sub-genres that I didn't have a confident opinion on.
On a strictly personal note and opinion, I myself wouldn't place Acid-jazz under Jazz, and I wouldn't put Abba under Adult contemporary, but those are all personal choices, and there is no 'correct'.Yes i just consider Acid Jazz to have a Jazz base, with elements of Funk, Soul and by extension Disco.
Where would you place it ?
About ABBA, i was talking specificly about the song "I have a dream", i tag only tracks by tracks, i never do artist tagging.
But maybe you were indeed talking about the song. How would you categorize it ?
I associate Adult Contemporary with acts such as Frank Sinatra, Steely Dan, The Blue Nile, Leonard Cohen, etc.
<STYLE> "International; Japanese Contemporary"
Genre Category: Japanese Pop/Rock
<Genre> Japanese Pop
<(Sub)Genre> Japanese Pop Rock
<(Sub)Genre> Japanese Pop Trip Hop
<STYLE> "International; Japanese Contemporary"
Genre Category: Japanese Pop/Rock
<Genre> Japanese Pop
<(Sub)Genre> Pop Rock
<(Sub)Genre> Trip Hop
What do you think of this structure I'm currently retagging my music by? Should I bite the bullet and make a custom tag for subgenres, or do you think I can make the Tag Hierarchy work with genre tags alone? Here's an example of what I'd expect from a track with the genre tagged as "Hip-Hop Soul." The bolded elements are the expected structure.
<STYLE> Urban Adult Contemporary
Genre Category: Rhythm & Blues
<Genre> Rhythm & Blues
<Genre> R&B
<Genre> Contemporary R&B
<(Sub)Genre> "Hip-Hop Soul"
<Genre> Pop R&B
About your use of a "Style" tag, that makes perfect sense. Same as the 'Keywords" tag, that can be additionally useful to genre tags.
But to be honest, at this moment I can't get it clear in my head how that would work when integrating it in the Tag Hierarchy structure.
Do you have something like that working already?
What is nice about the Tag Hierarchy browser is that a song can show up under more node than one.
If you have a song tagged with the genres "Acid jazz" and 'Jazz", when navigating the Hierarchy browser, you will find that song both under the Jazz category, and also under the Electronic category.
I'm sorry, these are probably not adequate answers to your questions, but I hope it makes some sense anyway.
I'm not sure about the way you include the country here.
My advice is to not include the country in the genre, i don't use things like "J Rock" or "Japanese Rock", because it's musicaly not different than western Rock, only the language vary.
So my advice is to use a custom tag for the language of the lyrics.
The reason was so I could separate Pop Rock from American artists from the same genre from Japanese artists, but I'm likely going to follow your advice and figure out how to use the <STYLE> custom tag to split out artists by country.
Acid jazz for me goes under Electronic.
Thanks, guys, for your assistance. I didn't forget about this thread, I've been extensively retagging all my music tracks since our previous discussion. I'm probably at like one percent complete!
My process is extremely OCD: I'm trying to get as granular for genres, which I'm considering a "track-level" tag. Big ups to ThY for the remark about setting a limit on the number of genres on a track; I've decided on three max. For now, I've decided to use <STYLE> as an "album-level" tag. (If my Tag Hierarchy panel would ever work properly, it would sort through there as well.) Here's how it looks in the main panel.
I'm thinking about making a "...brainz"-type web app for strict genre assignment at the track-level, so no very casual electronic listener (me) has to crawl through search engines to figure out what kind of techno a specific Aphex Twin track is. 😩It's hard to genre tag casually listened music, maybe you should be less OCD-like with genres you struggle to differentiate naturally, and be more global.
Quick question: how are you all handling tags for interludes, skits and especially intros/outros? For the time being, I've just removed the genre tag, but it messes with my Virtual Tag <STYLE-GENRE> and leaves only the <STYLE> tag visible. Any suggestions on this?I just tag them like anything else, even if it's not "music". Why don't you want to tag them ?
I'm at like 11% :(
So i chose the hard way, but it's neat now, i have the pictures that i want, and it works with multiple artists per song. MusicBee displays randomly pictures of artists found on the multiple artist splitter window.
It's hard to genre tag casually listened music, maybe you should be less OCD-like with genres you struggle to differentiate naturally, and be more global.
Or else you'll have to learn how to recognize them like i do each time i can't put a genre name on a song, it's far more time consuming but so interesting :)
I just tag them like anything else, even if it's not "music". Why don't you want to tag them ?
Glad it helps, i think it is reasonable, i chose max 2, but i am using another custom tag for notable instruments, ballads and power ballads.
How do you use your style album tag ? Which "field" are you using and how do you display it ?
I'll maybe like it lol
$IsNull(<STYLE>,,$First(<STYLE>)$IsNull(<Genre Category>,,": "<Genre Category>))$IsNull($Split(<STYLE>,;,2),,$Replace($CutLeft(<STYLE>,$Len($First(<STYLE>))),;," |"))<STYLE> <Genre Category>
Alternative Rock: Pop · Rock
<STYLE> <Genre Category> <STYLE>
Urban Adult Contemporary: Funk · R&B · Soul | Holiday<STYLE> <Genre C...> <STYLE> <Genre>(But How?!)
Adult Standards: Pop · Rock | Holiday: Christmas carol
How do you filter ballads? As you can see in my screenshots, I add it after the genre if necessary, but I'm not completely satisfied with this, as looks long and ugly in some cases. "Contemporary R&B Ballad," for example.
I use a specific tag that i called "Musical Object", which i use for notable instruments (unusual or very prominent ones) and for ballads or power ballads.
But i think we don't have the same use of tags and classification, so my track information windows are kinda different.
Ambient should be a main umbrella genre.I was thinking the same thing.