How to get year of recording from Picard to MB?

[Johan_A_M]

Hi!

I know there are a lot of discussions about different dates/years, both here and in the Picard forum. Being a true amateur in scripting, I'd really appreciate some help on this. I've tried locate a useful answer, but can't really find one (that I get...).

I'm tagging some classical boxes, right now the Great Pianists of the 20th Century. When creating a folder system, I'd like to use the year a specific piece was recorded (for example to separate a specific conductor's cycles of symphonies). However, I'm simply to stupid to understand how to get that information all the way from Musicbrainz



to an Exception template in MusicBee. I've seen that Picard now has a "_recording_firstreleasedate", but that does not seem to be the answer. I guess it's because it's a release date and not a recorded date.

Really sorry for another "<Year>" discussion!


Edit: Ok, sorry, I just saw that there's a ticket for this in Picard, https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/PICARD-2094. So, the ones in here dealing with classical music, how do you go about when you want a Recorded Year tag, or perhaps a Performed Date tag? Do you simply create a custom tag, and then populate manually? All input appreciated!

[hiccup]

Good investigating! There is not a lot of good or helpful information to be found on this.
Indeed 'date recorded' can not be retrieved by Picard at this moment.
Either the Picard developers will need to add it, or someone needs to write a plugin for it. (or add it to an existing one)

So all that you (we) can do at this moment is manually adding them.
I believe that the R in the ID3 tag TDRC originally stood for 'recorded', but I don't believe any software or tag provider ever used it for that.
So it's best to use a custom tag for it so that it has no chance of getting overwritten by other tools that have different opinions on its purpose.

[Johan_A_M]

Hiccup, thanks for, as usual, such a helpful and lengthy answer! Just or of curiosity, how do you personally handle the different years involved in classical music? Do you create custom tags for recorded, performed, composed etc? I know how (positively) obsessed you and all the other classical aficionadas in here can be, and I’m just trying to absorb all kinds of advice/tips…
Thanks again!

[The Incredible Boom Boom]

Not @hiccup, but I account for the following in most cases:
First Release Date

Code

<ORIGINALDATE>=1979-08-15
<Original Year>=1979

Reissue/Remaster Release Date

Code

<Year>=2002-12-17

Recording/Overdubb/Mix/Master Dates (when possible)

Code

<RECORDINGINFO>=recorded:Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden (1978-11->1978-12); mixed:Plumpton Place in Plumpton, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom

This works for nearly all cases, except box sets and other multiple album packages.
In these scenarios, <ORIGINALDATE> is the box set's original release date, <Original Year> is assigned the first release of the album within the set and <Year> stays the date of the particular release.
First Release Date

Code

<ORIGINALDATE>=1997-11-18

Original Album's First Release Date

Code

<Original Year>=1980-07-25

Reissue/Remaster Release Date

Code

<Year>=2003-09-09

Recording/Overdubb/Mix/Master Dates (when possible)

Code

<RECORDINGINFO>=recorded:Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas (1980-04->1980-05)

[hiccup]

how do you personally handle the different years involved in classical music? Do you create custom tags for recorded, performed, composed etc? I know how (positively) obsessed you and all the other classical aficionadas in here can be, and I’m just trying to absorb all kinds of advice/tips…

I probably have been obsessive about this, for the main reason that it was such a tough and frustrating matter to grasp and handle when I first sank my teeth in it.
My aim was probably to get a good and full understanding on the matter, and be able to retrieve, manage and benefit from having as much possible correct data (dates) as possible.

But, I think I have become a little bit wiser. (or just lazier)
These days I am not putting in excessive effort to have all sorts of dates populated and correct.
(except for that I have tweaked Picard as much as possible to do this automatically for me)

For example, for my non-classical music library I don't care much about the recording dates.
Most popular music was originally released on LP's end CD's, and having their (first) release date is fine by me.
(I might care about the specific release date for e.g. re-releases, when they have a very different track list, or are very different-sounding remasters.)

For classical music it's a different story. There it is the recording date that is most important.
Which is (should be) the date of the performance.
E.g. for famous performances and recordings that date from before the LP/CD era, I am mostly interested in having that recording/performing year correct, and the first date when it was released as an LP or a CD is of far less importance to me.

So, summarised:
For classical music I am mostly concerned with getting recording dates correct, and I put far less effort in managing and maintaining the other date types.
For non-classical music I am mostly concerned with getting the 'first released' dates correct, and I don't put too much effort in the other date types.

Obviously I do have created some specific custom tags and slightly complicated virtual tags to be able to manage dates so to get practical and sensible end-results for both classical and non-classical.

But after I made the decision a while back to have separate MB installs for my classical and non-classical music, this is one aspect that became a lot easier to manage.
I now don't need to use complicated virtual tags any more that have different outputs depending on if a track is of the classical persuasion or not.
My classical MB has dedicated virtual (and custom) tags, and so has my non-classical MB.

edit:
Another observation while giving this matter more thought. (again):
A lot of modern music doesn't even have a recording date that could be used or makes sense.
Constructing tracks in DAW software is not 'recording', and the dates that actual performers (musicians) performed and were recorded can vary a lot. And how about tracks that use audio samples from years or decades earlier? What would be the (singular) recording date for those?

[Johan_A_M]

Recording/Overdubb/Mix/Master Dates (when possible)

Code

<RECORDINGINFO>=recorded:Polar Studios in Stockholm, Sweden (1978-11->1978-12); mixed:Plumpton Place in Plumpton, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom

This works for nearly all cases, except box sets and other multiple album packages.
In these scenarios, <ORIGINALDATE> is the box set's original release date, <Original Year> is assigned the first release of the album within the set and <Year> stays the date of the particular release.

Thank you @The Incredible Boom Boom! It looks quite similar to my system, although I haven't thought about recording info, that's a good one! Do you use this also to annotate live performances?

[Johan_A_M]

For example, for my non-classical music library I don't care much about the recording dates.
Most popular music was originally released on LP's end CD's, and having their (first) release date is fine by me.
(I might care about the specific release date for e.g. re-releases, when they have a very different track list, or are very different-sounding remasters.)

For classical music it's a different story. There it is the recording date that is most important.
Which is (should be) the date of the performance.
E.g. for famous performances and recordings that date from before the LP/CD era, I am mostly interested in having that recording/performing year correct, and the first date when it was released as an LP or a CD is of far less importance to me.

So, summarised:
For classical music I am mostly concerned with getting recording dates correct, and I put far less effort in managing and maintaining the other date types.
For non-classical music I am mostly concerned with getting the 'first released' dates correct, and I don't put too much effort in the other date types.

Obviously I do have created some specific custom tags and slightly complicated virtual tags to be able to manage dates so to get practical and sensible end-results for both classical and non-classical.

But after I made the decision a while back to have separate MB installs for my classical and non-classical music, this is one aspect that became a lot easier to manage.
I now don't need to use complicated virtual tags any more that have different outputs depending on if a track is of the classical persuasion or not.
My classical MB has dedicated virtual (and custom) tags, and so has my non-classical MB.

edit:
Another observation while giving this matter more thought. (again):
A lot of modern music doesn't even have a recording date that could be used or makes sense.
Constructing tracks in DAW software is not 'recording', and the dates that actual performers (musicians) performed and were recorded can vary a lot. And how about tracks that use audio samples from years or decades earlier? What would be the (singular) recording date for those?

Thanks again @hiccup! I agree. I started off tagging my non-classical albums, and don't care that much about any time reference other than the original release year. Then on a few albums I add LP vs CD more for the fun of it, and I have a "remastered" tag that I occasionally (rarely) use. This system would be more for the Aerosmith, Van Halen, Beatles etc albums. Moving over to the more club/lounge-oriented music, I haven't found the time yet to deal with remixers/feat artist. My problems, as for sp many others, started when moving into the classical field, but like with you, I enjoy it more than pull my hair over it (apart from when things aren't working). I'm a true newbie in classical, previously just listening to the standard 101 works like Beethoven's symphonies, Chopin Nocturnes and, well, you get the picture... However, I recently decided to understand classical music better, (like "what is actually a sonata, or allegro, or why are symphonies sometimes accompanied by overtures), and after hours of enjoyable YouTubing, I started collecting boxes. After that, I realised that not all conductors or pianists or ... are the same, and got into collecting some few pieces but in multiple interpretations. That's where my need for a customised folder system grew. Since I don't use MB for listening, it mostly comes down to the folder system. Recently I've considered skipping the standard "<genre>/<composer>/..." etc and instead try to understand how I actually want to listen. By doing that, it would perhaps make more sense to use something like "<genre>/<grouping>/<X>" where grouping could be "Piano concertos", "Violin sonatas", "Symphonies" or whatever. The <X> could of course be the composer, but also the conductor or the pianist (basically <album artist>). In this way, I could decide to get nerdy about Beethovens' piano sonatas and easily find everything. (Once again, had I been using MB as a player, I guess this would've been easy. Now I basically access everything through Sonos).

Anyway, long texts about nothing, thanks for listening