Two tagging questions for classical music

[simoncn]

(18-02-2013 21:00)magister Wrote:  I'm trying to tighten up my tagging system.

1. I've read the user guide about how MinimServer handles the Artist and Albumartist tags. I've also searched the net for other info about how people deal with the Artist and Albumartist tags; there seems to be a lot of variation. It seems that:

a. the best practice is to put an artist that appears in all the tracks -- the "main" artist on the album, so to speak -- in Albumartist. (This might be an ensemble, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra. I use a separate tag for conductor.)

I'd be very interested in references that say this "main artist" should not be tagged as Artist in addition to being tagged as AlbumArtist. My understanding is:

1) For a multi-artist album, it would be appropriate to tag the "main artist" as both AlbumArtist and Artist.

2) For a single-artist album, it would be appropriate to tag the single artist as Artist, and you could also tag the single artist as AlbumArtist if you use the AlbumArtist index to search for main artists.

Quote:b. one puts additional artists in the Artist field. These might be artists who only appear on one or two tracks, guest artists not normally a part of the ensemble, etc.

c. For MinimServer, one must include the "main" artist in the Artist field as well as in Albumartist; otherwise the main artist won't appear in MS's All Artists tag list since that excludes Albumartist.

Example: an album of works by Brahms includes two orchestral pieces and the Alto Rhapsody. For all tracks, Albumartist = Netherlands Philharmonic. For the Alto Rhapsody, Artist = name of the singer and Netherlands Philharmonic. For the other, orchestral-only tracks, Artist = Netherlands Philharmonic.

Is this right?

See comment above.

Quote:2. For MinimServer, the best practice to include both a Group and a Composition tag to deal with multi-movement works such as symphonies. I've been using a Composition tag but will add the Group if needed. (So far I don't have any albums where the movements of a composition are split up.)

Thanks - David

There's an important difference between the Group and Composition tags. The Group tag is handled specially by MinimServer: it creates an intermediate level between an album and the individual tracks from that album. For example, when viewing the contents of an album, you'll see each group within the album as a single item instead of seeing all the tracks as separate individual items.

There's nothing special about the Composition tag. If you decide to use it, MinimServer treats it as a custom tag, just like any other custom tag that you might put in your files and add to the indexTags property. The benefit of using this tag is to provide an index entry that enables you to find all your recordings of a particular composition (for example, Bach's Mass in B Minor).

I hope this helps to show that Group and Composition are both useful, but they are useful for different things.