How to organize and tag classical music

[DavidHB]

(24-09-2014 08:10)swdick Wrote:  - do I need to group a composition even when it's in a folder of its own? If so, how?

First, a point of clarification, because it is not clear what you mean by 'folders'. Minimserver does not use file and folder names in the file system to index the music tracks. An 'album' is simply the set of tracks which have have tag values that cause MinimServer to treat them as an album (details are here in the User Guide). Some Control Points also represent the nodes on the browse tree as folders (indeed, Kinsky names them as such), but this, in my view, too readily leads to the misconception that the browse tree is based on the file system, which is not the case.

You group a composition by giving the Group tag (which, typically, you use a program such as MP3Tag to add) the same value in each of the tracks making up the composition. Typically, that value is the name of the work, so the Group and Composition tags will often, but not always, have the same value.

You have two tags because they have different functions. Composition is used as a normal component of the browse tree, typically to select a work before you select the album or part album you are going to play. Group (described in detail in the User Guide) is used to group tracks (typically of a single work) within an album or a single disc of an album indexed as multi disc (again as described in the User Guide).

Group is useful as a means of making the track list in an album more readable. For instance, an album of the Brandenburg Concertos might simply be listed as the six concertos rather than as the 19 individual movements. This is a case where, in my library, the Composition and Group tags are different; the former is simply 'Brandenburg Concertos', while the latter is specific to each concerto. As I said in my last post, it all depends how you find you wish to access individual pieces of music, and you can change things as your understanding develops.

You are not obliged to group tracks; for instance it is probably not appropriate to do so in a compilation of essentially unrelated single tracks. I would say that you do need to set the Composition tag for every track. I would also suggest that Control points tend to display things more neatly if all the tracks of an album are either grouped or not grouped; where all tracks are grouped, you sometimes get 'groups' with just one track. That isn't an issue for me.

(24-09-2014 08:10)swdick Wrote:  - How to make a symfony that is on a double album (e.g. Bruckner 8) appear as one composition?

Essentially, give all the tracks of the Symphony the same Composition tag value, and make sure all the recordings of that work in your library use the same composition value. If there is more than one recording, when you select a composition the browse tree will give you the option to select the album you wish to play.

You do have options as to whether you treat the discs of a multi-disc album separately or as a single album, and this too is fully explained in the User Guide (link above). I sometimes list the separate disks, and sometimes (especially if, say, one act of an opera is split across discs) I treat the whole set as a single album.

(24-09-2014 08:10)swdick Wrote:  - How to determine the order of the movements?

Make sure that the album number and track number tags are correctly set. Ripping programs often set the track number plus the track title as the file name, which is useful, but where there is a multi disc album, I set the file name to be disc number-track number-title.

(24-09-2014 08:10)swdick Wrote:  - what is the logic in the display logarithm? Can I determine what is shown in the control point (I use Kinsky)?

This is a bit complex. MinimServer controls what is sent to the Control Point and the latter determines how it displays what it receives. Behaviour varies between Control Points. Kinsky does not have much by way of options, but does pretty much display what MinimServer sends (except that is not that efficient in the use of space and tends to truncate entries on smaller screens). Using MinimServer settings to configure your browse tree and tag formats will give you plenty of options - far too many to describe here!

It is worth trying different Control Points; if you use Kinsky, Kazoo is a fairly obvious alternative if it is supported on your platform, though opinions vary on which is preferable. On Android, I would prefer Bubble DS or UPnP to Kinsky (Kazoo is not yet available on Android).

I hope this helps.

David