Use of MusicBee for Classical Music

[MTVhike]

I tried asking this question yesterday but took too long writing it and my session timed out, so here goes again. I just discovered MusicBee and am amazed at how much you can do with it. One thing I would like involves the tags Genre Category and Movement. When I select "Select Displayed Fields", these two appear, but when I select EDIT, I can't find them.

Another thing, another user recommends using Picard to find tags but I believe that's a database and most of the files I have aren't on that database, either because they were digitized LPs, or they are from privately-created CDs. So I just need to get the information and type it in.

[stevie02222]

...So I just need to get the information and type it in.

Not sure if this is what you are referring to, but if you just want to edit the individual tracks, press SHIFT+ENTER to bring up the editor screen then you can switch between the headings to update the tags you want.

[MTVhike]

That command gets me to the Edit window, as does right-clicking. But once in that window, the Movement or Genre Category tags aren't available.

[psychoadept]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

To get to the classical fields like work and movement, you need to click the small arrows next to Title in the tag editor.

Genre category is not edited directly, but can be set relative to genres in Tags(2) preferences.

[MTVhike]

I am using MusicBee for two purposes: 1. To provide a way to organize and play my music on my Win10 PC, and 2. To load flash drives to play in my car, which lacks a CD player. Since the player in the car only displays 3 tags (Title, Artist, and Album, in that order), I need to populate those tags with Composer, Work, and Album, with each tag limited to ~12 essential characters! Plus, I need to create files from my library for my wife's non-classical files (for which the default tags work OK).

[stevie02222]

Given the limitations of your car player I would suggest that you add the data you require to the tags it will display (Title, Artist, and Album) for your classical music (regardless of what they are actually intended to hold). You might want to add this to the correct fields too (as indicated by psychoadept) so that your cataloguing can be maintained. Personally I would use a custom tag and and call it IS_Classical and set this to 'Y' for your classical tracks so that in future you can be selective about which tracks are included where, e.g. Custom1=Y would only show a search/playlist/whatever for classical. That way, your wife's tracks could be tagged in the usual manner and Custom1<>Y would only display her music. From there, you could then continue to split down further as you would do on normally tagged tracks.

[stevie02222]

A second thought has just occurred. You can create more than one MusicBee library.  File/Library/Create New Library. From the same menu can elect to open a library of chioice.
One library tagged with the info you want in the fields your car player can handle. Another library for 'other' music tagged in the more conventional way.
Would seem to be the simplest/cleanest option to me.

[MTVhike]

I haven't tried it yet, but another music player I have is a NAD C 368 which has the BluOS module. It also has a USB connection, to which I can plug in a flash drive (done that with old files) or a NAS. How would the tags in the Flash/NAS drives be interpreted by the NAD? My hope is that my main library (on my PC) would work, or maybe I could connect the NAD to my PC via Ethernet and stream - is that possible?

[stevie02222]

Ok...you lost me when you said BluOS/NAD/NAS...might as well have been in Swahili. Very old school here...USB/Flash drive...gotcha. Anything else goes way above my head.
Hopefully somebody else can answer those for you.

[hiccup]

This thread seems to be going astray quickly, but to respond to some issues mentioned in the start post:

The next time you can't post because you were logged out and your message seems lost; try to navigate back to the previous page in your browser so your composed text is back in view.
Then in another tab log-in again.
After that you should be able to post the already composed message.
–

The Genre category tag is not an actual tag that is stored in your files, but a concept that MusicBee uses internally to categorise actual genre tags.
–

Picard retrieves information from MusicBrainz.
MusicBrainz is completely 'Release' based, so that includes vinyl, cd, dvd, etc.
If your album/artist/titles are in order, matching could work using Picard's 'Lookup' function, else you could try 'Scan' to see if the sound signature is matched, and/or you could use the 'Lookup in browser' function.

Compilations are a little bit more problematic. But if you do some research and test things out yourself you should be able to have some success on those too.

[MTVhike]

I apologize to both Stevie and Hiccup for straying from MusicBee's prime function, and especially to Stevie for doing what I hate others doing - that is using a lot of jargon/abbreviations without explanation (I'm very frustrated on another forum where so many people do this that I can't figure out what they are saying).

BluOS is a system of streaming music from various sources, including the internet to your own system - think Sonos but in high resolution.

NAD is a manufacturer of audio equipment which may use BluOS, and in my case, I can plug a flash drive with tracks edited with MusicBee into it's USB port.

NAS means Network Attached Storage - usually a hard disk which also has a network connection; it's one way to store and access massive amounts of data, including music.

Thanks to Hiccup for correcting my view of Picard - I thought it was just a database for CDs that had digital signatures and thus allows for the tracks of such CDs to be tagged, is it an access point for MusicBfrainz? You say "If your album/artist/titles are in order, matching could work using Picard's 'Lookup' function...", what do you mean by this? If my tracks didn't come directly from a ripped CD, my album, artist, and titles are all read off the cover of the disk and entered manually using a program like MusocBee. How would I use Picard?

Thanks again.

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

You say "If your album/artist/titles are in order, matching could work using Picard's 'Lookup' function...", what do you mean by this? If my tracks didn't come directly from a ripped CD, my album, artist, and titles are all read off the cover of the disk and entered manually using a program like MusocBee. How would I use Picard?

He means that if those fields are correctly tagged, all it will take to use Picard will be dragging albums into the program and clicking "Lookup" or "Scan" and if someone has entered the metadata into MusicBrainz, you can start your tagging and editing process from there.

[MTVhike]

So if I'm manually tagging them, then Picard won't find them?

[hiccup]

So if I'm manually tagging them, then Picard won't find them?

There is a lot of information on Picard to be found here:
http://picard-docs.musicbrainz.org/en/index.html

For finding information on it on this forum, look here:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=16538.0