(05-02-2016 11:22)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ] (05-02-2016 09:49)Suth Wrote: [ -> ]Hi,
I am happy to share my experience with tagging classical music and you'll understand why i ended up using minimserver and nothing else.
I tagged my music with Foobar that is highly flexible. For Classical musical i created additional fields like area (Baroque, Classical, middle-age, etc...), performer (I use the composer as artist), instruments, tone, country. And for title, i reference the catalog number when it exists rather than a name (BWV for Bach, RV for Vivaldi, etc...) and i created a movement field. It is created with a number to indicate which movement it is and additional info like adagio, andante, etc...
I have done that to be able to find quickly in Foobar a given composition. Other name commonly used is refered as a comment.
Then i had to find a server able to display this information in a readable manner. In Minimserver, i have merged title and movement to see what i was playing. Anyway, the track number puts everything in the right order, but it is useful to see what you listen.
The only thing i am missing in minimserver is conditional choice. For exemple, i would like to do actions only if the track belongs to classical music. It would enable me to have the right view for each type of music.
If any of you have an idea, he is welcome !
I used Cambridge CXU as a renderer, Bubbleupnp as control point and Synology
Thanks for sharing this. Can you give some examples of the actions you would like to do for classical music only?
Typically, for rock music i do not need to merge title and movement fields as the moevement field is empty. I would use that typeof merging only for classical.
Another example, all my artists in classical are Last name, First name (Vivaldi, Antonio). In other genres they are First name last name (David Bowie). So if i start to do action on artist, it would end up in a big mess. I have not been consistent between classical and other music because my needs were different.
(05-02-2016 15:18)Suth Wrote: [ -> ] (05-02-2016 11:22)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ] (05-02-2016 09:49)Suth Wrote: [ -> ]Hi,
I am happy to share my experience with tagging classical music and you'll understand why i ended up using minimserver and nothing else.
I tagged my music with Foobar that is highly flexible. For Classical musical i created additional fields like area (Baroque, Classical, middle-age, etc...), performer (I use the composer as artist), instruments, tone, country. And for title, i reference the catalog number when it exists rather than a name (BWV for Bach, RV for Vivaldi, etc...) and i created a movement field. It is created with a number to indicate which movement it is and additional info like adagio, andante, etc...
I have done that to be able to find quickly in Foobar a given composition. Other name commonly used is refered as a comment.
Then i had to find a server able to display this information in a readable manner. In Minimserver, i have merged title and movement to see what i was playing. Anyway, the track number puts everything in the right order, but it is useful to see what you listen.
The only thing i am missing in minimserver is conditional choice. For exemple, i would like to do actions only if the track belongs to classical music. It would enable me to have the right view for each type of music.
If any of you have an idea, he is welcome !
I used Cambridge CXU as a renderer, Bubbleupnp as control point and Synology
Thanks for sharing this. Can you give some examples of the actions you would like to do for classical music only?
Typically, for rock music i do not need to merge title and movement fields as the moevement field is empty. I would use that typeof merging only for classical.
Another example, all my artists in classical are Last name, First name (Vivaldi, Antonio). In other genres they are First name last name (David Bowie). So if i start to do action on artist, it would end up in a big mess. I have not been consistent between classical and other music because my needs were different.
There's probably no harm in merging title and movement if movement is empty - you get the result you want all the same.
For names, one thing you could do is use mp3tag or puddletag to do some conditional generation of sort names (ARTISTSORT), or a new tag field if you prefer, based on the genre, so that the new tag ends up being consistent across all genres. It's not exactly trivial, but it can be done.
Another approach would be to do both types of 'action' (whatever it is - I'm not sure what you are trying to do) generating both non-classical and classical names, and then use the 'classical' filter I suggested earlier to see the type of thing you want.
(05-02-2016 15:33)Pastim Wrote: [ -> ] (05-02-2016 15:18)Suth Wrote: [ -> ] (05-02-2016 11:22)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ] (05-02-2016 09:49)Suth Wrote: [ -> ]Hi,
I am happy to share my experience with tagging classical music and you'll understand why i ended up using minimserver and nothing else.
I tagged my music with Foobar that is highly flexible. For Classical musical i created additional fields like area (Baroque, Classical, middle-age, etc...), performer (I use the composer as artist), instruments, tone, country. And for title, i reference the catalog number when it exists rather than a name (BWV for Bach, RV for Vivaldi, etc...) and i created a movement field. It is created with a number to indicate which movement it is and additional info like adagio, andante, etc...
I have done that to be able to find quickly in Foobar a given composition. Other name commonly used is refered as a comment.
Then i had to find a server able to display this information in a readable manner. In Minimserver, i have merged title and movement to see what i was playing. Anyway, the track number puts everything in the right order, but it is useful to see what you listen.
The only thing i am missing in minimserver is conditional choice. For exemple, i would like to do actions only if the track belongs to classical music. It would enable me to have the right view for each type of music.
If any of you have an idea, he is welcome !
I used Cambridge CXU as a renderer, Bubbleupnp as control point and Synology
Thanks for sharing this. Can you give some examples of the actions you would like to do for classical music only?
Typically, for rock music i do not need to merge title and movement fields as the moevement field is empty. I would use that typeof merging only for classical.
Another example, all my artists in classical are Last name, First name (Vivaldi, Antonio). In other genres they are First name last name (David Bowie). So if i start to do action on artist, it would end up in a big mess. I have not been consistent between classical and other music because my needs were different.
There's probably no harm in merging title and movement if movement is empty - you get the result you want all the same.
For names, one thing you could do is use mp3tag or puddletag to do some conditional generation of sort names (ARTISTSORT), or a new tag field if you prefer, based on the genre, so that the new tag ends up being consistent across all genres. It's not exactly trivial, but it can be done.
Another approach would be to do both types of 'action' (whatever it is - I'm not sure what you are trying to do) generating both non-classical and classical names, and then use the 'classical' filter I suggested earlier to see the type of thing you want.
Thanks, i'll try. I spend a lot of time on looking at all the possibilities and i would say it is a lot of fun and at the end a high level of comfort.
Hello Simon,
I have started FLAC ripping of my CDs and tagging with partly customized tags some weeks/months ago and have only a small classical music collection among them.
Recently, I have got the Naxos 12 CD box "The complete Beethoven symphonies - concertos - overtures".
Tagging is a challenge here since the symphonies e.g. are not distributed in ascending order over the CDs, e.g. CD 1 contains symphony no. 1 and no. 6.
Furthermore, the CD set contains recordings from five different orchestras / conductors and numerous solists.
However, I want to keep the FLAC files all in a single folder, trying to bring them into a reasonable order, first starting with the symphonies in their natural numbering. Here, I do not use the group tag so far but rather virtual disc numbers like [disc 01] as Album tag suffix ... with verbose CD titles like "Symphony no. 1". Also, each symphony / concerto (or a reasonable combination for smaller works) gets its own CD number with the movements beginning from track 01 within.
In general, I fill:
AlbumArtist = <Orchestra>, <Conductor first name> <Conductor last name>
AlbumArtistSort = <Orchestra> (<Conductor last name>, <Conductor first name>)
AlbumSmartSort (custom tag) = <Composer last name>, <Composer first name>
Album = <CD box title> [disc nn]
Artist = <Composer first name> <Composer last name>
ArtistSort = <Composer last name>, <Composer first name>
Also, I have filled separate Composer, ComposerSort, Orchestra, Conductor, and Solist tags.
The custom tag AlbumSmartSort contains:
* ComposerSort for classical music
* Album for soundtracks and other compilations
* AlbumArtistSort for all other music.
My relevant MinimServer settings are:
indexTags = Artist, Date, Genre, All Artists, Composer, Orchestra, Conductor
itemTags = AlbumArtist, ArtistSort, AlbumArtistSort, AlbumSmartSort,
ComposerSort, Solist
mergeFolderAlbums = false
tagOptions = Album.sortTags={AlbumSmartSort, +Date, Album}, all.ignore.sort={The, Der, Die, Das, El, Le, La, Los, Las, Les}, -Album.ignore.sort, Date.yearOnly.index
tagValue = AlbumSmartSort.default={ArtistSort, AlbumArtistSort}, Artist.value.sort={ArtistSort}, AlbumArtist.value.sort={AlbumArtistSort}, Composer.value.sort={ComposerSort}
showExtras = true
startupScan = true
tagCustom = AlbumArtist.displayRole={artist}, Composer.displayRole={artist}
tagFormat = Artist.displayFormat={$artist$orchestra$conductor$solist}
My AlbumSmartSort tag is all the same for the whole CD collection, here =
'Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, Béla Drahos / Capella Istropolitana, Barry Wordsworth / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hilary Davan Wetton' while
Album = 'The complete Beethoven Symphonies - Concertos - Overtures [disc nn]'
What really I don't want, is to stuff the AlbumArtist and AlbumArtistSort with all five orchestra / conductor combinations, meaning for the particular Beethoven set:
AlbumArtist =
'Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, Béla Drahos / Capella Istropolitana, Barry Wordsworth / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hilary Davan Wetton / Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephen Gunzenhauser / Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Kenneth Jean'
AlbumArtistSort =
'Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia (Drahos, Béla) / Capella Istropolitana (Wordsworth, Barry) / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Davan Wetton, Hilary) / Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra (Gunzenhauser, Stephen) / Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra (Jean, Kenneth)'
However, if I use different AlbumArtist / AlbumArtistSort assignments, only with orchestras / conductors relevant for a particular CD, multiple instances of the CD appear in the Kazoo app.
How can I get MinimServer to leave all tracks together without having such huge AlbumArtist(Sort) tags?
I find that, with classical music, the ways in which I most commonly wish to browse my library are
- a particular performance of a work (browse sequence Genre>Composer>Composition>Album);
- a particular album (Genre>Composer (or Artist)>Album>[Complete Album - if needed]).
Otherwise, I tend to use UPnP search to find what I need.
I can sympathise with the desire to keep tag length manageable. Early on in the ripping and organisation of my library, I decided
- to omit composer names from track and (usually) album titles and to display composer names using tagFormat ("Title.displayFormat={$composer$title^^^: }");
- to use album titles that were sensible within each composer grouping, and often with the principal performer's name in brackets, for example "Symphonies 1 to 9 [Davis]"; this is often completely different to the title on the Album cover; I also use the album title as the folder name (within a composer folder), so that the path for my example album is "E:\Music\Classical\Beethoven\Symphonies 1 to 9 [Davis]";
- to create a "Composition" field/tag, so that, within a composer selection, I can browse for all the recordings of a particular work - an example would be "Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21";
- to use Groups within albums, typically to identify individual works or sections of a work (for example, acts of an opera); often, but by no means invariably, the contents of "Group" would be the same as "Composition", but separate tags are needed because they are used at different points in the browsing sequence.
Of course for all this to work, I do need to be careful that the tagging is consistent throughout the library, so that, for instance, "Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21" is so tagged in all my recordings of the work, that composer names are consistently spelt throughout, and so on.
If you were to make changes along these lines (which follow fairly closely the suggestions in the MinimServer User Guide), it would require a fair amount of work, but I think you would find that the results were worthwhile.
David
(09-05-2016 00:50)bhl66 Wrote: [ -> ]However, if I use different AlbumArtist / AlbumArtistSort assignments, only with orchestras / conductors relevant for a particular CD, multiple instances of the CD appear in the Kazoo app.
MinimServer doesn't allow different AlbumArtist tag values within the contents of a single album (i.e., a single CD with your tagging system).
If you want to have different "album artist" tag values within a single album, you could use some other custom tag name for this "album artist" information and add this custom tag name to indexTags so that you can use it for browsing purposes.
Another option is to tag the files with Orchestra and Composer values and use tag formatting to create "album artist" information to appear in your control point, as DavidHB has suggested.
(09-05-2016 17:12)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]MinimServer doesn't allow different AlbumArtist tag values within the contents of a single album (i.e., a single CD with your tagging system).
If you want to have different "album artist" tag values within a single album, you could use some other custom tag name for this "album artist" information and add this custom tag name to indexTags so that you can use it for browsing purposes.
It may be useful to make a distinction between
AlbumArtist, for which only one value (it may be blank) is allowed in MinimServer, and
Artist, for which multiple values are allowed.
That said, if I have understood your tagging scheme correctly, you are trying to use a single tag/field to contain multiple data elements. Although there are no tagging 'rules' which prevent you from doing this, it will be very difficult to avoid inconsistencies and confusion as your library grows. It is better, as Simon is in effect suggesting, to use different tags for different purposes, even when (as is often the case with my Group and Composition tags) they often contain the same data.
(09-05-2016 17:12)simoncn Wrote: [ -> ]Another option is to tag the files with Orchestra and Composer values and use tag formatting to create "album artist" information to appear in your control point, as DavidHB has suggested.
I was trying to keep the description of my system as simple as possible, so I did not mention that I use Composer, ComposerSort, Orchestra, Soloist and Conductor tags; I always populate the first two, but only populate the others when they are relevant. In the tagging software I use (MP3Tag), I ensure that all the tags I regularly use are shown on the tag panel, so that they can easily be populated as necessary.
David
(09-05-2016 17:40)DavidHB Wrote: [ -> ]It may be useful to make a distinction between AlbumArtist, for which only one value (it may be blank) is allowed in MinimServer, and Artist, for which multiple values are allowed.
Good poiint. The OP is using the Artist tag to hold composer information, so a simple fix might be to use the Composer tag for composer information and the Artist tag for artist information.
Just my 2 cents but following DavidHB's suggestion and Simon's schema I reserve artist(s) and albumartist for what is commonly called "popular" music and I am using composer, orchestra, conductor and performer(s) for my "classical" branch, said branch not containing any entries for artist or albumartist. I can find things quickly and the results look great in the various control points I use. Simon's tag formatting feature even lets me lets me work around Kodi's minimally implemented UPNP support.
Just my 3 cents worth but for now I'm not using the group feature, every work is it's own album. Since I am educating myself about classical music I like having different artists interpretations of the same work list next to each other.
Just my 4 cents worth but if you can't leave well enough alone like me, Mp3Tag may be the way to go; serious batch processing and powerful macros. You can change thousands of tags at once. I had thousands of tracks with year tags like 1989;1989 and no consistent implementation of album artist vs. albumartist. Mp3Tag cleaned that up and eliminated the need to use Simon's aliasTags feature for fixes.
Having said all this I think MinimServer should come with a warning

I was sure the last embers of any audiophile pursuits I had died out in the early nineties. Having re-discovered my music I now catch myself reading about things like tube rolling and apparently I am now a part of a new-fangled branch called Head-Fi. Where will it end?

I'm just sayin'
(09-05-2016 19:57)GregR Wrote: [ -> ]Just my 2 cents but following DavidHB's suggestion and Simon's schema I reserve artist(s) and albumartist for what is commonly called "popular" music and I am using composer, orchestra, conductor and performer(s) for my "classical" branch, said branch not containing any entries for artist or albumartist. I can find things quickly and the results look great in the various control points I use. Simon's tag formatting feature even lets me lets me work around Kodi's minimally implemented UPNP support.
This is a very valid way of doing things. I think that there is a good case to argue that AlbumArtist is redundant for classical music (though I've always used it and habits die hard). Artist is, for me, a slightly different matter. Often, one is looking for a particular performance of the work, which may imply a particular group of artists (One example: Karajan's 1950s recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies with the Philharmonia, as distinct from his 1970s and 1980s sets with the Berlin Philharmonic). The Artist tag (perhaps in combination with the Album title) can be used to distinguish between these performances.
(09-05-2016 19:57)GregR Wrote: [ -> ]Just my 3 cents worth but for now I'm not using the group feature, every work is it's own album. Since I am educating myself about classical music I like having different artists interpretations of the same work list next to each other.
I get to a list of different recordings of the same work via the Composition tag. If the title of the work is distinctive ("Alborado del Gracioso"), it may not even be necessary to browse via the composer selection. Grouping (and disc sub-titling where appropriate) is useful to isolate a complete work (or some other logical grouping of tracks) within an album, and provides a path to a recording of a particular work via an album selection. Composition and Grouping are well worth experimenting with, particularly as MP3Tag makes the process so easy.
(09-05-2016 19:57)GregR Wrote: [ -> ]Just my 4 cents worth but if you can't leave well enough alone like me, Mp3Tag may be the way to go; serious batch processing and powerful macros. You can change thousands of tags at once. I had thousands of tracks with year tags like 1989;1989 and no consistent implementation of album artist vs. albumartist. Mp3Tag cleaned that up and eliminated the need to use Simon's aliasTags feature for fixes.
I absolutely agree. My main frustration with MP3Tag at present is that I can't persuade it to run under Wine in Linux.
David