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General => General Discussions => Topic started by: hiccup on September 14, 2021, 11:00:15 PM

Title: Classical music affinados using the 'work' and 'movement' tags to satisfaction?
Post by: hiccup on September 14, 2021, 11:00:15 PM
Personally I couldn't figure out how I could make things work using these two tags intended for classical music, so I created my own scheme, ignoring them completely.
In my opinion, they are a bit coarse, ambiguous and not applicable to all types of classical compositions.

I am interested to learn if there are MusicBee users (that are also classical music aficionados) that have put these two tags to good use and are fully satisfied with them.

Especially the 'movement' tag was problematic for me, and I am interested if, and how others are using it.
Is it for you unique in the sense that it has different content from the 'title'? Or do they sometimes, or always overlap?
Is 'movement' for you working fine for e.g. both operas and concertos?
How do you populate these tags? Manual or by using some tagger?
(I don't even know if MusicBee can populate them somehow?)

shoot…
Title: Re: Classical music affinados using the 'work' and 'movement' tags to satisfaction?
Post by: Zak on September 15, 2021, 08:07:25 AM
I spent an inordinate amount of time tagging and arranging my classical tracks compared to how often I go out of my way to listen to them.

Most of my classical music comes from compilations in which each track is unrelated or albums containing multiple works from different composers.
So tagging them as I would a normal album didn't seem like the right approach.

Instead, I configured a view that shows a portrait of each composer, and a list of work titles with the movements listed separately.
The result is kinda okay:

(https://i.imgur.com/VtE2fhZ.png)

I am using the Work and Movement tags in this view (in virtual formulas).
The first track in that screenshot uses the following values:

(https://i.imgur.com/9EWQPL0.png)

The Title is a combination of the other values, so it still appears meaningful in other views.

I also have a custom tag for Catalog No. to display works in numerical order.

Having got this working, I'm questioning whether it is worth it.
MusicBee really expects albums of the more traditional Artist/Album/Track arrangement, and displaying tracks differently requires a lot of convoluted exceptions to the normal tagging rules, and a bunch of virtual tags to display different values for classical/non-classical tracks.
For example, you can't give your classical tracks an album title, otherwise MusicBee will display separate artwork for each one.  :-\
Title: Re: Classical music affinados using the 'work' and 'movement' tags to satisfaction?
Post by: hiccup on September 16, 2021, 07:10:06 AM
I am using the Work and Movement tags in this view (in virtual formulas).
How do you populate Work and Movement?
I don't think MusicBee is able to do that using auto-tagging?
So are you using an external tagger for that, or are you splitting the full title for that somehow?
Title: Re: Classical music affinados using the 'work' and 'movement' tags to satisfaction?
Post by: Zak on September 16, 2021, 03:37:22 PM
I do all but the most basic tagging manually in Mp3tag.
Well, 'manually' in the sense that I don't pull values from MusicBrainz or Discogs etc.

I do have a butt-tonne of custom Mp3tag actions that do most things for me.
One of which is splitting the Title tag of a classical track to separate Work, Movement and MovementName tags.
Title: Re: Classical music affinados using the 'work' and 'movement' tags to satisfaction?
Post by: The Incredible Boom Boom on September 17, 2021, 12:01:20 AM
Picard is the first gear in my tagging process, which is especially useful for classical music, because <Title>s are (supposed to be) standardized in accordance with their Style Guide.
This makes it relatively easy for Actions in MP3TAG to parse the <Title> for <Work> <Movement #> <Tempo> <Key> and sometimes the <Movement Name>  to separate tags.
I hate the way MusicBrainz defines a "work" for classical music, though. All the movements collected are the "work" - not the individual movements, in my opinion.
Anyway, this works well for generically-titled stuff... "Symphony in _, Op.__" "Sonata for ______, BWV _____"
For uniquely titled pieces, the original title (in its original language) goes in <Work> and <WORKSUBTITLE> holds the translation if I don't understand the language.
Both these tags get consolidated and displayed with a Virtual Tag <WORK HEADER>.

Is it for you unique in the sense that it has different content from the 'title'? Or do they sometimes, or always overlap?
Is 'movement' for you working fine for e.g. both operas and concertos?

I use it a lot, especially for titles in ballets and operas. Like... <Movement Name> = Einzug der Götter in Walhall; Entrance of the gods in Valhalla
In "generically-titled" tracks, usually there's nothing there, with the exception of Scherzo, Rondo, Minuet. Those (and maybe another one or two) get parsed into <Movement Name>.

EDIT: I also use a Virtual Tag to display every track title in my music library, so that's why I've been able to utilize the "classical tags" to their full extent.
Title: Re: Classical music affinados using the 'work' and 'movement' tags to satisfaction?
Post by: psychoadept on September 17, 2021, 03:51:35 PM
I also use Picard, with some custom scripts to extract work, movement #, name, etc. Which works well for the majority of cases. For more complex ones I still have to fiddle with it. For instance, I find operas to be a big mess.