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Alpina_Lux · 31-03-2014, 10:27

(23-03-2014 17:58)magister Wrote: @Alpina_Lux,

Simon's suggestion about starting off small and experimenting is a very good one. Here are some other thoughts.

My personal belief is that it's much better to put all your tagging into the actual music files, as opposed to having the information in a database created by a particular music management program. It might be difficult or impossible to get the information out of such a proprietary format if you ever wanted to move to a different program.

My thoughts exactly! Which is why I chose to go ahead with the FLAC format. It's lossless (one box ticked), not proprietary (unlike the Apple formats for example) and portable insofar as it stores the tags directly in the file.

(23-03-2014 17:58)magister Wrote: So you need to store your music in a format such as FLAC that stores the tags inside each file. Music management programs like MusiCHI may have an option to do this. In other words, even if you do the tagging inside MusiCHI, the information is written into each music file. Even so, I recall that MusiCHI keeps its own database and allows you to define some "custom" tags and I'm not sure how portable those would be.

That is also what I understood from their website, quoted by Simon as well.

The whole interest for me in a program like MusiCHI is to be able to easily create useful custom tags (e.g. soloist, conductor, orchestra, recording venue, recording date) and to populate at least most of them automatically (by using their database) and consistently (which is one of the biggest challenges to make one's own library searchable later on). Their "clean" function as I understand it has been conceived to do just that, and with thousands of CDs in my collection this will make the tagging process so much easier (at least that's what I hope).

However, as I want to use MinimServer and a tablet-based control point without an additional computer, it is necessary that those tags can also be read by other programs such as MinimServer and the control point. It seems I can only be certain that this works by trying it out with a few CDs - but if it works, it should simplify my ripping/tagging work quite a bit.

(23-03-2014 17:58)magister Wrote: I think you should come up with a system that works for you and make sure all your information travels with each file. Some time ago Simon put up here the details of how he tags music, and some other people added more info. Look at the very first post in this thread, on the first page -- it's a great starting point. My system is similar to what Simon describes, although I added a couple of additional custom tags. As you use MinimServer, you will learn how you like to search. For instance, I have a lot of recordings of music by Beethoven. I added a "subgenre" tag that lets me pick Beethoven and then go immediately to the symphonies, bypassing chamber music, concertos, etc. if I want to hear one of the symphonies. Even with your own system, you can still use MusiCHI for tasks like making sure that your tags are consistent.

I've read this and already given quite a bit of thought on this myself. Your approach also seems very useful; however, as other participants in this thread pointed out, I also need to make sure that there are not too many tags which may make tagging too complex and time consuming. [/quote]

(23-03-2014 17:58)magister Wrote: For tagging on Windows, you can use the very nice mp3tag program (despite its name, it writes many kinds of tags including FLAC). It's donationware so you can try it and see if you like it. If you are fairly computer-savvy, foobar2000, a player for Windows, also does tagging. It's free but the setup is tougher for non-geeks. Creating custom FLAC tags is easy with mp3tag, which is what I use.

For classical music, you will probably need both Group and Composition tags. See the info above in this thread and read the relevant sections of the MinimServer manual. To distinguish multiple performances by the same artist, one way is to adjust the titles of the albums. For instance, I have one album by Glenn Gould called "Goldberg Variations [1955]" and another "Goldberg Variations [1980]".

That's a good idea; I just need to make sure that it works for a substantial number of performances of the same work.

For example, I have around 60 recordings of Chopin's 1st piano concerto, among them probably two dozen by Martha Argerich alone. I need to be able to search for a specific recording of that work and distinguish live and studio recordings; I'd also like to see the label if it has been published.

It seems that the following tags are required in that case:
- composer (Chopin)
- composition (piano concerto no. 1 op. 11)
- orchestra (e.g. Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal)
- conductor (e.g. Charles Dutoit)
- soloist (M. Argerich)
- recording date (e.g. 1999)
- recording venue (e.g. Montréal)
- recording type (live / studio)
- label (e.g. EMI)

I assume the "Group" tag will also be necessary, in order to be able to link the three movements of the relevant composition together, as well as to be able to include any encores that are given in case of a live performance.

Quite complex, all this!