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Full Version: COMPOSER tagging and viewing
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Apologies if this has been covered, but....

In some respects I am a bit of a Nerd. I enjoy getting my metadata correct and complete. I use an excellent program on my Mac called Tag Editor that allows all sorts of clever shortcuts and block substitutions.

As an ex jazz player myself I have learned to love the standards - Great American Songbook, as well as pop records of my youth.

And to a better understanding of who was who I have made a hobby during Covid lockdown of filling in the Composer fields in my metadata. I use the site Allmusic, and there are of course others. Discogs can also be useful. It often involves a cunning bit of detective work and metadata that is downloaded when ripping a CD is often inaccurate.

But I have nearly completed all that is realistically achievable in my collection of FLACs.

Firstly, anyone share my passion? Secondly, what it the best app on an iPad to show Composer? My favourite app for many reasons is Lumin but can this be improved upon when playing a playlist? Simply holding a finger on any track on the screen will reveal a lot about it including composer.

But are there any apps that openly display composer? Of course my Linn streamer runs it across the screen when it starts off a track but that is of limited use.

Any ideas??

Donuk beautiful downtown York
So nobody seems to have picked this one up yet. Perhaps there are not so many composer nerds.

So let me take a stab. Is there any clever way to code Minim so that Lumin thinks that track artists are composers?? That is when Lumin forms its own database it reads in all the composer tags and displays them next to the track name instead of the track artist (which is often obvious). Could be fun to try if not to live with permanently.

Donuk beautiful downtown York
(03-08-2020 08:55)Donuk Wrote: [ -> ]So nobody seems to have picked this one up yet. Perhaps there are not so many composer nerds.

So let me take a stab. Is there any clever way to code Minim so that Lumin thinks that track artists are composers?? That is when Lumin forms its own database it reads in all the composer tags and displays them next to the track name instead of the track artist (which is often obvious). Could be fun to try if not to live with permanently.

Donuk beautiful downtown York

A couple of features come to mind.

Alias tagging

And/or

Tag formatting
To expand a little on these two options, aliasTags will change all your track artists to composers everywhere. The setting for this is

(in aliasTags) Composer:-Artist

tagFormat will leave the LUMIN "folder view" index as showing artists but should (hopefully) display composers instead of artists everywhere else. The setting for this is

(in tagFormat) Artist.displayFormat={$composer}

You can experiment to see which you prefer.
Thank you Alan and Simon for your help. Will try this in due course.

As ever, this forum is great. One of the few where you can say you don't know something without someone calling you stupid.

Don
I must report back on this one - it has been a lot of fun.

So far, I have tried, (in aliasTags) Composer:-Artist

And with Minimserver 2 things are easier and more flexible. What I did of course was to save my current settings as Donz. Then I did the Composer:-Artist bit and restarted the server.
Then saved it as DonzComposer. Now easy to switch between the two from my iPad.

As I said I usually use Lumin on my iPad. So I also started HD Streamer, a Lumin clone. Then in HD Streamer I made it reload the music library. I then had one app (Lumin) focussing on Track Artist, and the other (HD Streamer) considering Composers.

The various effects and presentations of information is too complicated to list here - but well worth the fun of having a go. Invaluable for sad people who want to sit around their hifi and have "composer evenings".

This process also has a very interesting effect on the Linn control apps, the effects of course being immediate and not relying on rereading the music database.

Happy days

Donuk beautiful downtown York
I tag everything with Composer if possible -- and to the extent time allows.

Many computer applications show Composer by default. The multiplatform one that comes to mind is JRiver Media Center. Then Roon, of course.

I don't know about apps for iDevices. Apple has a poor record on this, starting with the idiotic scheme they introduced with iTunes, in which there is one and only one Artist per track. This led to all kind of trouble and problematic work-arounds, especially for classical music lovers. But I hope you find something that does what you want.
Yes, Mike, once you have a lot of the composer fields completed, one's music collection gets really interesting.

Following the suggestion of Alan, above, and input from Simon, I have arrived finally at this solution which is ideal for me.

in tagFormat put

title.displayFormat={$title^$composer^ [^]}

Which puts square brackets around the composer(s) following all presentations of the track title.

e.g. She Loves You [Lennon-McCartney]

Works particularly well in Lumin, although in that app of course you have to reload the local music library on your iPad or whatever.

All good fun...

Donuk sunny downtown York
Forgive me if I am trying to squeeze the last drops of juice out of these fantastic Minimfeatures, and also for the fact that it may be obvious to others, but does anyone know how I could achieve this:

If "Comment" = "HD" then print "Album" & " HD"

That is if I have put just the letters HD in my Comment field I can then see on the screen Album + " HD"
e.g. It would show up as Dark Side of the Moon HD.

Just wonderin.........

Donuk beautiful downtown York
(18-09-2020 16:13)Donuk Wrote: [ -> ]Forgive me if I am trying to squeeze the last drops of juice out of these fantastic Minimfeatures, and also for the fact that it may be obvious to others, but does anyone know how I could achieve this:

If "Comment" = "HD" then print "Album" & " HD"

That is if I have put just the letters HD in my Comment field I can then see on the screen Album + " HD"
e.g. It would show up as Dark Side of the Moon HD.

Just wonderin.........

Donuk beautiful downtown York

It is already possible to show the album name in that way.
Using this parameter in tagFormat
Album.displayFormat={$album^$#AudioQuality^ [^]}
you have this (attached screenshot)
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