Author Topic: Come join me in hell (Classical music tagging)  (Read 10232 times)

Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336
So, a few days ago I decided that my life was too simple, devoid of massive headaches, and to remedy that I was going to start collecting and tagging classical music. The first problem I encountered was the realisation that I knew less than nothing about the subject. Because of this, trying to establish a tagging system and a workflow that suits all the different types of releases I might encounter is troublesome simply because I have no idea what I might encounter. What I've come up with so far looks good in theory, but I'm hoping that someone who's well-versed in this can provide me with examples of releases where my proposed tagging system will fall short.

I'm really hoping to avoid having to re-tag this part of my collection in the future and I'm therefore trying to cover all the bases from the beginning. Any tips, ideas and suggestion on the topic is more than welcome. I'm also looking for reliable online databases for tagging things like genre, styles, periods and so on.

Aside from the sortcomposer and sortartist tags, I'm planning on sorting everyone by their first name. For clarification, in this post, the system is formatted as:

[TAG]: Value


[Album Artist]: Composer
[Artist]: Composer
[Composer]: Composer
[Conductor]: Conductor
[Artist:Performer]: Performers/Orchestra *1

[Work]: Name of Work (e.g "Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125")
[Title]: Movement (e.g "I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso", "II. Molto vivace" and so on)*2

[Original Date]: Year/Decade the piece was composed
[Original Year]: Year album was first released
[Date/Year]: Date/Year of my specific album release *3

[Genre]: Genre (Concerto, Opera, Sonata)
[Style]: Style (Cello concerto, Overture, Piano sonata)
[Period]: Period (Baroque, Classical, Romantic)

*1 This is my main concern right now. I'm using Musicbrainz Picard to tag the files and as those of you who do surely knows, the list of performers can get pretty clogged up by some less important names when using panels like the thumbnail browser. Question is, is it worth creating a custom tag dedicated to a main artist or orchestra to keep everything neat and easier to find? As I understand it it's hard sometimes to even decide on a single main artist with some pieces.

*2 Ideas for how this can be achieved automatically using Picard would be appreciated.
  
*3 This is the system I'm using for modern music so I figured I'd stick with it as I don't see any downside.

To those of you who are still here, I appreciate you and any insight you may offer. Thank you.


Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336
Have you taken a look at hiccup's magnum opus here:  https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28999.0

I've glanced over it before but then completely forgot about it. I'm reading through it now and going to try it out but a few things make me hesitant. Just copying and pasting a bunch of scripts is great when the release is available in the MB database but for the times when it's not, I'll have no idea how to add the data manually as I don't know exactly what the scripts are doing. That part is learnable though so, not sweating that too much.

One of the virtual tags (which one depends on how much info I want here) that are being referred to in that guide would have to be copied over to <title> though, to jive with the rest of my library. The <title> tag is used in the main player and so on so I can't use the virtual tag here directly as it would show up as empty for every other track that is not classical music.

The Incredible Boom Boom

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1269
Have you taken a look at hiccup's magnum opus here:  https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28999.0

One of the virtual tags (which one depends on how much info I want here) that are being referred to in that guide would have to be copied over to <title> though, to jive with the rest of my library. The <title> tag is used in the main player and so on so I can't use the virtual tag here directly as it would show up as empty for every other track that is not classical music.

I use a virtual tag (<LABEL>) to display <Title> if my custom <STYLE> tag doesn't contain any information. More details about <STYLE> below.

[Album Artist]: Composer
I don't understand why many people label the composer as the album artist, especially since lots of CDs are multi-composer. I use either the conductor or primary performer.
[Artist]: Composer
[Composer]: Composer
[Conductor]: Conductor
[Artist:Performer]: Performers/Orchestra *1

[Work]: Name of Work (e.g "Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125")
I have the key and the work title in separate tags (i.e. "Symphony No. 9, Op.125" in <Work> and "D minor" in <INITIALKEY>. The virtual tag I use for sub-headers puts "in <INITIALKEY>" back into work title when displayed in the main panel.
[Title]: Movement (e.g "I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso", "II. Molto vivace" and so on)*2
I split the movement number (i.e. "I") and the tempo into separate tags. As with the above splitting, I do this in case I want to change the way things are displayed later and its easier to do this having portions of information in respective tags now rather than splitting them down the road.

[Original Date]: Year/Decade the piece was composed
[Original Year]: Year album was first released
[Date/Year]: Date/Year of my specific album release *3

[Genre]: Genre (Concerto, Opera, Sonata)
I only use "Classical" in the <Genre> tag. Some might object with technicalities ("opera isn't classical"), but <Genre>="Classical" is the laziest way for my mp3tag action groups and MusicBee virtual tags to work. As well...
[Style]: Style (Cello concerto, Overture, Piano sonata)
...I put the type of piece in a custom <STYLE> tag. "Opera," "Nocturne," "Symphony," "Virtuoso (piano)," "Sonata," "Sonata Cello," "Sonata Piano" are examples. I use multi-values here.
[Period]: Period (Baroque, Classical, Romantic)

Quote
*1 This is my main concern right now. I'm using Musicbrainz Picard to tag the files and as those of you who do surely knows, the list of performers can get pretty clogged up by some less important names when using panels like the thumbnail browser. Question is, is it worth creating a custom tag dedicated to a main artist or orchestra to keep everything neat and easier to find? As I understand it it's hard sometimes to even decide on a single main artist with some pieces.

I display the composer, conductor and performers in the Track Information tab like...

Ludwig van Beethoven
Herbert von Karajan with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Wiener Singverein led by Reinhold Schmidt
alto: Hilde Rössel-Majdan · bass: Walter Berry · soprano: Gundula Janowitz · tenor: Waldemar Kmentt

The conductor, orchestra and choir receive their own line and other performers are displayed as MB normally would. I haven't yet come to a conclusion on what to do when the performer is the featured performer of the track, however. For now, their name is displayed as "instrument/voice type: name"

Quote
*2 Ideas for how this can be achieved automatically using Picard would be appreciated.

I don't use the classical titles plug-in for Picard, but from my experience, nearly all the titles I've come across are normalized to a particular standard anyway. I use mp3tag to split the information into distinct tags.
Last Edit: May 19, 2020, 06:03:57 PM by The Incredible Boom Boom

hiccup

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 7781
So, a few days ago I decided that my life was too simple, devoid of massive headaches, and to remedy that I was going to start collecting and tagging classical music.

Haha, that's a good attitude and mindset to go and kill some classical monsters.

The smartest thing I can probably say about this is that the best system for handling and maintaining Classical music, is your own system.
While I do some things a bit differently then you, it looks like you come prepared, and as long as you decide on a system and stay consistent with it, your system should work pretty well.

My system handles Album Artists, Titles, and the different work levels a bit different from yours, but just copying my system without thinking it through (and having lived through the obstacles that made it as it is now) is probably not the best idea.

What I would suggest: install portable versions of both MusicBee and Picard and create a test library containing some more complicated classical composition. (containing several levels of works)
Some that are present in MusicBrainz database, and a couple that are not.
Some operas, some concertos, some large works from Bach and Wagner, and certainly a 'The Very Best of Classical Music Hits for You' compilation album. (you said you wanted headaches...)
Then do lots of testing on that before deciding on your 'final' system.

---
Your question about Genre's and Periods; if you use the Classical Extras plugin for Picard, it has some specific features and settings for both under the 'Genres etc.' tab.

---
You could also install an additional portable MB/Picard setup, and configure them exactly as I described here:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28999.0
Just follow the steps and don't give them a second thought.

Then load some releases through Picard, and see the results using those virtual tags in that MusicBee installation.
The 'standard' tags shouldn't differ much a 'normal' installation, but the (single) custom tag and the virtual tags should give very nice results and possibilities.

You might like it, and if not, it could be at least useful for you to see if 'your' system gives some similar results, and if you perhaps will want to tweak your system a bit more in some areas.

---
Quote
One of the virtual tags (which one depends on how much info I want here) that are being referred to in that guide would have to be copied over to <title> though, to jive with the rest of my library.

If I recall correctly how I've set it up: if it doesn't get a match of a Classical multi-level work, it will retrieve the standard _recordingtitle tag, which I think is what you would normally get also.

In case you have a mixed classical/non-classical library and you would want to use the virtual tags for non-classical music too, it shouldn't be too hard to add something like "$If genre category is not classical, A, else B".

---
F.w.i.w., a while back I decided to try using two separate MusicBees for Classical and Non-classical.
I must say that for now I am very happy with that decision, and will probably keep it that way.
It saves me lots and lots of time and headaches in trying to get formulas, tags and layouts working perfectly for both very different genres.
 


Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336
I don't understand why many people label the composer as the album artist, especially since lots of CDs are multi-composer. I use either the conductor or primary performer.

I'm aware that some people argue against this and I'm still evaluating options. I've more or less ruled out the "primary performer" route as I see me endlessly arguing with myself over which performer would be considered the primary one on some albums. The "conductor" route is plausible but at the same time I feel that, for me personally, I would more often choose to browse and listen by composer than I would by conductor. And with regards to how my modern library is set up, both tag wise and on a file/folder level, having the composer as the album artist just makes more sense for me. It really isn't a big deal either way as I'll be using Musicbee exclusively which means I can choose to display the <conductor> tag in place of <album artist> wherever I want. Nothing is set in stone, thankfully.

Quote
I have the key and the work title in separate tags (i.e. "Symphony No. 9, Op.125" in <Work> and "D minor" in <INITIALKEY>. The virtual tag I use for sub-headers puts "in <INITIALKEY>" back into work title when displayed in the main panel. I split the movement number (i.e. "I") and the tempo into separate tags. As with the above splitting, I do this in case I want to change the way things are displayed later and its easier to do this having portions of information in respective tags now rather than splitting them down the road.

I agree with you regarding splitting it into multiple pieces. I'll address it further below. I've removed the initialkey from the work as I will be using this tag on a folder level and as you pointed out, it doesn't really belong there.

Quote
I only use "Classical" in the <Genre> tag. Some might object with technicalities ("opera isn't classical"), but <Genre>="Classical" is the laziest way for my mp3tag action groups and MusicBee virtual tags to work. As well... I put the type of piece in a custom <STYLE> tag. "Opera," "Nocturne," "Symphony," "Virtuoso (piano)," "Sonata," "Sonata Cello," "Sonata Piano" are examples. I use multi-values here.

I was planning on using "Classical" as my genre category which means it doesn't have to be in any tag itself. Using the existing <Genre> and adding a custom <Style> allows me to have a two level hierarchy (three if you count the category) when browsing by genre, might be overkill, but why not? Haven't really decided yet, I might follow your example and stick to one category along with multiple styles.

Quote
I display the composer, conductor and performers in the Track Information tab like...

Ludwig van Beethoven
Herbert von Karajan with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Wiener Singverein led by Reinhold Schmidt
alto: Hilde Rössel-Majdan · bass: Walter Berry · soprano: Gundula Janowitz · tenor: Waldemar Kmentt

The conductor, orchestra and choir receive their own line and other performers are displayed as MB normally would. I haven't yet come to a conclusion on what to do when the performer is the featured performer of the track, however. For now, their name is displayed as "instrument/voice type: name"

I was thinking of cutting down on the artwork as I don't really see the point of it when it comes to classical music. The track information panel will instead be heavily utilised for exactly the kind of stuff you mentioned.

Quote
I don't use the classical titles plug-in for Picard, but from my experience, nearly all the titles I've come across are
normalized to a particular standard anyway. I use mp3tag to split the information into distinct tags.

From what I've gathered so far that does seems to be the case. Thankfully, the people interested in classical music does seem to be very thorough and prefer standardization (who'd have thought? /s). Regarding the splitting of the information in the title, I'm totally with you. As to on which application level this should be done I am a bit limited as I'm not well-versed in regex. Trying to do this in mp3tag or picard is therefore not on the table at this moment. I've looked through the guide by hiccup which provides the regex for splitting the title using virtual tags in musicbee and this seems to be the way that's most suitable for me. Not to mention the fact that I'm also limited by the number of custom tags I currently have available in MB. Splitting it in mp3tag would cause me to have to add more custom tags than I have available.

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

Haha, that's a good attitude and mindset to go and kill some classical monsters.

The smartest thing I can probably say about this is that the best system for handling and maintaining Classical music, is your own system.
While I do some things a bit differently then you, it looks like you come prepared, and as long as you decide on a system and stay consistent with it, your system should work pretty well.

My system handles Album Artists, Titles, and the different work levels a bit different from yours, but just copying my system without thinking it through (and having lived through the obstacles that made it as it is now) is probably not the best idea.

I absolutely agree with you about your own system being the best one so I'm not looking to completely adapt someone elses. But being in the process of developing your own system it's always useful to ask for input from the people who've been through it before as there's always something to learn and maybe parts of what others do would work well for me too.

Quote
What I would suggest: install portable versions of both MusicBee and Picard

I managed to find out that it is possible to run the standalone version of picard with two different ini files and that made it alot easier. I now have a picard configuration only for classical music with it's own file naming template, scripts and plugins.

Just make a copy of your "Picard.ini" that's in %APPDATA%\Roaming and name it whatever as long as there's no spaces. Then you create a new shortcut to picard adding -c Path\to\new\ini to the target of the shortcut.

I thought I could make this work with my regular installation of musicbee but it turned into a pita. Adding new tags causes a full library rescan and that's just too tedious. So I ended up taking your advice and downloaded the portable version and I'll be using that to experiment on.

Quote
and create a test library containing some more complicated classical composition. (containing several levels of works)
Some that are present in MusicBrainz database, and a couple that are not.
Some operas, some concertos, some large works from Bach and Wagner, and certainly a 'The Very Best of Classical Music Hits for You' compilation album. (you said you wanted headaches...)
Then do lots of testing on that before deciding on your 'final' system.

Yeah... No, that's definitely not going to happen and I dislike you a bit for even suggesting that. It reminds of the early days of building my library. Compilations were great because "there's so many good tracks on one album" and then I went to tag them, some of which were not in the Musicbrainz database, and that opinion quickly changed. Now I avoid compilations to the fullest extent possible. But I do get what you're saying. Adding a lot of different albums, some in databases and some not, is a good way to see how the system performs in different scenarios.

Quote
You could also install an additional portable MB/Picard setup, and configure them exactly as I described here:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=28999.0
Just follow the steps and don't give them a second thought.

I'm actually in the process of doing just that. I needed a good way to split the title without it taking up too many custom tags. I have however already ran into some trouble with it and I'm hoping you've seen something like it before and could be able to point me in the right direction. I've tried with a couple of different albums and they all produce to the same results and I'm guessing this is why nothing shows up in my virtual tags either. After saving the files in picard, the tag <picard title full> looks like this:

 ₄Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125: II. Molto vivace⁴

The parts of the title are not being numbered as per your example and instead the full title is encapsulated in "4". In musicbee, all the virtual tags, when used in i.e the thumbnail browser just says "[Unknown]".

Quote
F.w.i.w., a while back I decided to try using two separate MusicBees for Classical and Non-classical.
I must say that for now I am very happy with that decision, and will probably keep it that way.
It saves me lots and lots of time and headaches in trying to get formulas, tags and layouts working perfectly for both very different genres.

Yeah, I've seen you mention it before but I don't see that route being suitable for me. I like having everything in one instance of musicbee and so far, my tags and layouts aren't that complicated in a way that it's impossible to work around and make both parts of my library jive with each other.

hiccup

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 7781
I managed to find out that it is possible to run the standalone version of picard with two different ini files and that made it alot easier. I now have a picard configuration only for classical music with it's own file naming template, scripts and plugins.
Just make a copy of your "Picard.ini" that's in %APPDATA%\Roaming and name it whatever as long as there's no spaces. Then you create a new shortcut to picard adding -c Path\to\new\ini to the target of the shortcut.

That's kind-of the 'old way' of having dedicated purposed Picard's on your system.
Since last year Picard is available in a portable version.

While the ini trick will work fine, I recall having had some problems with unintentionally changed configuration settings.
It could be due to me having accidentally running two versions at the same time, I am not sure.
With portable versions such would never happen.


Quote
...I have however already ran into some trouble with it and I'm hoping you've seen something like it before and could be able to point me in the right direction. I've tried with a couple of different albums and they all produce to the same results and I'm guessing this is why nothing shows up in my virtual tags either. After saving the files in picard, the tag <picard title full> looks like this:

 ₄Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125: II. Molto vivace⁴

The parts of the title are not being numbered as per your example and instead the full title is encapsulated in "4". In musicbee, all the virtual tags, when used in i.e the thumbnail browser just says "[Unknown]".

Could you share the link to MusicBrainz' release webpage for that release?
I'd like to see if it is perhaps due to some oversight in my script?

Quote from: hiccup
Some operas, some concertos, some large works from Bach and Wagner, and certainly a 'The Very Best of Classical Music Hits for You' compilation album.

Quote from: Tybot
Yeah... No, that's definitely not going to happen and I dislike you a bit for even suggesting that.

Haha, you said yourself that you desired headaches.
Crawling back already?

It could be better to confront the most amount of problematic cases now, while you have the motivation to figure out a good system.
If you avoid difficult or problematic works or releases now, there is a good chance you'll run into issues later, and will need to revise your system again.
And changing a system, scripts and formulas afterwards is far more difficult than creating them from scratch.
Especially if you need to change it after e.g. a year, and you may have forgotten your train of thought when you created it.
 

Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336
That's kind-of the 'old way' of having dedicated purposed Picard's on your system.
Since last year Picard is available in a portable version.

While the ini trick will work fine, I recall having had some problems with unintentionally changed configuration settings.
It could be due to me having accidentally running two versions at the same time, I am not sure.
With portable versions such would never happen.

I'll go ahead and download the portable version then. There's really nothing to it and I'd rather be on the safe side in case shit happens.

Quote
Could you share the link to MusicBrainz' release webpage for that release?
I'd like to see if it is perhaps due to some oversight in my script?

I doubt it since it happened on more than one release. I'm gonna do some more testing later. Setting up a portable picard that's completely fresh and then following your guide might yield a different result. Here's the links:

https://musicbrainz.org/release/cff493ba-6108-323f-ab16-9aa6057bceb0
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cd2d0e73-335e-42d7-a8b0-cf4e07e8a2a4
https://musicbrainz.org/release/e1c584ea-aa28-4fd5-8734-3b18420975d2


Quote from: hiccup
Haha, you said yourself that you desired headaches.
Crawling back already?

It could be better to confront the most amount of problematic cases now, while you have the motivation to figure out a good system.
If you avoid difficult or problematic works or releases now, there is a good chance you'll run into issues later, and will need to revise your system again.
And changing a system, scripts and formulas afterwards is far more difficult than creating them from scratch.
Especially if you need to change it after e.g. a year, and you may have forgotten your train of thought when you created it.

Oh, this is still very much an ongoing battle. One day I feel like I should just give it up because I'm never going to figure it out, and another I'm reminding myself that's exactly how it felt when I started tagging my modern library. I'm really happy with how that turned out in the end, even though it's always going to be a work in progress, so I'm trying to focus on that and sticking with this.

I'm actually writing it down, sort of a guide to self. What information needs to be there and which tags do I have available. The next step is doing what you suggested and throwing a hell of a lot of examples in the mix and then it's "just" a matter of trying to complete the puzzle, finding something that works for all kinds of releases. I'm trying to get in the mindset of the fact that compared to modern music, there's going to have to be more typing and manual editing when it comes to the classical part and I'm slowly starting to accept that.


EDIT:

As I suspected. Portable picard together with your script and classical extras produces very, very different results. Your script from the guide looks as it should and so does a lot of other stuff compared to before. I didn't get the classical extras plugin at first because the results looked pretty much to what I'm used to, but obviously it wasn't working as intended.

Don't what was wrong with my previous config but thanks for convincing me of running the portable version. :)
Last Edit: May 22, 2020, 12:08:02 AM by Tybot

hiccup

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 7781
I'm gonna do some more testing later. Setting up a portable picard that's completely fresh and then following your guide might yield a different result. Here's the links:
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cff493ba-6108-323f-ab16-9aa6057bceb0
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cd2d0e73-335e-42d7-a8b0-cf4e07e8a2a4
https://musicbrainz.org/release/e1c584ea-aa28-4fd5-8734-3b18420975d2

These three all give good results for me.

Please let me know if for you they still don't after you followed my guide.
(be sure to take a very precise look at the screenshot of the configuration panel of the Classical Extras plugin)

Perhaps there is an oversight in some needed configuration setting in Picard or the CE plugin that I overlooked and didn't describe.
If so, I would appreciate it if you can report back so I can test and figure out what I missed, and then make a correction to the guide.

The Incredible Boom Boom

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1269
I don't understand why many people label the composer as the album artist, especially since lots of CDs are multi-composer. I use either the conductor or primary performer.

I'm aware that some people argue against this and I'm still evaluating options. I've more or less ruled out the "primary performer" route as I see me endlessly arguing with myself over which performer would be considered the primary one on some albums. The "conductor" route is plausible but at the same time I feel that, for me personally, I would more often choose to browse and listen by composer than I would by conductor. And with regards to how my modern library is set up, both tag wise and on a file/folder level, having the composer as the album artist just makes more sense for me. It really isn't a big deal either way as I'll be using Musicbee exclusively which means I can choose to display the <conductor> tag in place of <album artist> wherever I want. Nothing is set in stone, thankfully.

I've seen this issue mentioned before too, but, maybe fortunately, in a hundred and seventy-eight albums, I've not come across any where the decision was difficult to make. If, or as, your classical library grows, likely may come to find you have conductors and performers you prefer over others. The caveat is sometimes it does take an Amazon search or the publisher's website to help a conclusion, but a big (MusicBee) benefit is the combination of conductor and featured performer in files' <Album Artist> tag means not running out of column browser space from having <Conductor> and <Artists: Performer>/<Artists: Guest> or whatever there.

Quote
I've removed the initialkey from the work as I will be using this tag on a folder level and as you pointed out, it doesn't really belong there.

If I remember correctly, I use custom tag <INITIALKEY> along with a custom <PROPERKEY> for movements or sections with different keys. The sub-header grouping separates tracks when the <INITIALKEY> in one work was different, so I added the <PROPERKEY> so the that <INITIALKEY> could be the same. Although after explaining all that, I just realized I can save on a custom tag by multi-valuing <INITIALKEY>, with the first value being the starting key and the second being <PROPERKEY>.
Last Edit: May 22, 2020, 07:47:00 PM by The Incredible Boom Boom

Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336
I'm gonna do some more testing later. Setting up a portable picard that's completely fresh and then following your guide might yield a different result. Here's the links:
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cff493ba-6108-323f-ab16-9aa6057bceb0
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cd2d0e73-335e-42d7-a8b0-cf4e07e8a2a4
https://musicbrainz.org/release/e1c584ea-aa28-4fd5-8734-3b18420975d2

These three all give good results for me.

Please let me know if for you they still don't after you followed my guide.
(be sure to take a very precise look at the screenshot of the configuration panel of the Classical Extras plugin)

Perhaps there is an oversight in some needed configuration setting in Picard or the CE plugin that I overlooked and didn't describe.
If so, I would appreciate it if you can report back so I can test and figure out what I missed, and then make a correction to the guide.

I'm not gonna bother you (yet) with a bunch of technical questions regarding your guide as I've realized I still have a lot to learn, especially about title formatting, so I'm gonna read up to the point where I might be able to solve the problems I encounter along the way by myself. But I thought this might interest you, regarding this release:
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cff493ba-6108-323f-ab16-9aa6057bceb0

Other than what's mentioned in your guide I'm running classical extras with all the default settings and from what I understand, it adds "(part)" to partial recordings and that seems to trip up your <picard full title> tag, which is to be expected as it runs into something that shouldn't be there.

Here's a screen of track 4 along with the plugin settings and some of the tags: https://i.imgur.com/idb39Ec.jpg

The problem with track 4 snowballs into track 5 and even I could see that the <picard full title> tag doesn't look right: https://i.imgur.com/V2iS7BL.jpg



I did just try to disable that setting in the plugin but the result is still the same so I'll let you investigate it if you feel like it. I'm off to study up...

hiccup

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 7781
regarding this release:
https://musicbrainz.org/release/cff493ba-6108-323f-ab16-9aa6057bceb0

I did just try to disable that setting in the plugin but the result is still the same so I'll let you investigate it if you feel like it. I'm off to study up...

That's an interesting release to find possible issues indeed.
MusicBrainz labeled this info on that recording:

recording title:
Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125: V. Presto "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" - Allegro assai

live partial recording of:
    Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125 “Choral”: IV. Finale. Presto – Allegro assai (on 1979-09-05)

part of:
    Symphony no. 9 in D minor, op. 125 “Choral”


In my setup I got the result I would expect and desire:



But, I see you are absolutely right about the (part) part. So that is a very good find!
I had disabled that a while ago because (while it is factual correct info) I found it made the titles look a bit messy.

But you have now found and established that it can indeed mess up the work levels in my Picard script.
I am not sure if I can/will fix that. I did a brief test replacing (part) with [part] to see if the parentheses were the culprit, but that didn't make any difference.

What is weird is that disabling having CE writing (part) has been working fine for me for a while now, but for you it doesn't.
At the moment I have no idea why that's the case.

This is my setting:



Perhaps I'll setup a clean testing Picard/MusicBee combination to find out if there is more to this.
But that is probably going to be a while.
Last Edit: May 23, 2020, 03:44:59 PM by hiccup

Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336

I've seen this issue mentioned before too, but, maybe fortunately, in a hundred and seventy-eight albums, I've not come across any where the decision was difficult to make. If, or as, your classical library grows, likely may come to find you have conductors and performers you prefer over others. The caveat is sometimes it does take an Amazon search or the publisher's website to help a conclusion, but a big (MusicBee) benefit is the combination of conductor and featured performer in files' <Album Artist> tag means not running out of column browser space from having <Conductor> and <Artists: Performer>/<Artists: Guest> or whatever there.

 The lyrics part of this argument might not be as valid when it comes to classical music, but still. How do you deal with the tag based web searches? Custom web links can be configured of course as far as which tag you want as the basis of your search but I'm talking about the stuff that's hard coded in musicbee. Lyrics is one thing, artist picture and bio is another. I haven't really come to that part yet but picturing it I would probably prefer a picture of Beethoven and his bio if that's what I'm listening to as opposed to that of the conductor or performer. This is one place I run into a lot of blank results with my modern library when it comes to lesser known artists, would you say that classical music suffers from this more or less than pop music? Assuming of course this is even information that's displayed in your library.


Quote
I've removed the initialkey from the work as I will be using this tag on a folder level and as you pointed out, it doesn't really belong there.

If I remember correctly, I use custom tag <INITIALKEY> along with a custom <PROPERKEY> for movements or sections with different keys. The sub-header grouping separates tracks when the <INITIALKEY> in one work was different, so I added the <PROPERKEY> so the that <INITIALKEY> could be the same. Although after explaining all that, I just realized I can save on a custom tag by multi-valuing <INITIALKEY>, with the first value being the starting key and the second being <PROPERKEY>.
[/quote]

Great... So now you're telling me there's two kind of keys, on top of everything else I might have to tag? I'm glad you figured it out and I've been having thoughts along that line myself the past few days. Multi-valuing one custom tag and then extracting that info using a virtual tag could be useful for other stuff than just key and title.

Tybot

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 336


Yeah, well, I thought that since I have a lot of work ahead of me you should have the same, but what that last sentence is telling me is that you prefer to procrastinate?

Don't bother with the (part) issue for my sake. I just noticed that it was a default setting in the plugin that added something to your tag which wasn't mentioned in your guide. I agree with you about the part (pun unintended) about it looking messy so I'll keep it disabled.

What was tripping me up was that it added "IV" and part of its title to track 5 but the fact that you discovered that it was listed as a partial recording explains it. The other thing was the ellipsis at the end of picard title full, I can't figure out why they would be added as they're not visible in any of the source tags from what I gathered.

hiccup

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 7781
Multi-valuing one custom tag and then extracting that info using a virtual tag could be useful for other stuff than just key and title.

https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=16538.msg148820#msg148820

7 MusicBrainz IDs in one tag ;-)