[pennylane]

Not just tagging, filename conventions too I guess. What do you do? Note that I'm just asking what other people do and I'll figure out what I think is best afterwards....

This has always been a deterrent for me to listen to and buy a lot of classical music (my comp is still my only realistic source). Because I haven't really found or figured out a standard I could use. (And I really wish I had a standard for all my rips. I'm that type of person)

Here are some things I've decided as well as some of my questions (sorry I can't seperate them well because... they all seem to be interwoven)

Divide composers by subdirectory with CDs for each composer inside.
ie... Copland/Kunzel - 2000 - Copland The Populist

Tagging... make the artist the actual artist and not the composer. But should I limit it to conductor? Which orchestra? How about the solo instrument for concertos? What if there's more than one solo instrument?

I can throw some of those details in the "comments" section but I'm not sure which.

I don't know what the proper titles are for certain tracks (if there is such a thing). which is preferable?
Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor - 2 - Andante, BWV. 104
Violin Concerto No. 1 - A Minor - II - Andante, BWV. 104
Violin Concerto No. 1, BWV. 104 in A Minor - II - Andante

I imagine it's best to put the cataloguing number (I don't know the proper term) at the end. But what if the piece doesn't seem to have a number? Would it still be best to put it at the end after the 1 - Allegro?

I prefer using numerals instead of the roman ones to indicate movements so everything lines up properly.

What about pieces with names?
Would it be:
Symphony No. 6 - 'Pastoral' - 1 - Allegro

Is writing the "No." a good thing?

I'm not sure about anything. If anybody does this sort of thing too or can show me to a site that might help, that'd be much appreciated...

 

[erl]

I've been struggling with the same issues.

What I've normally done was to use the composer as artist, symphony (or similar) as album, movement as track name, and movement number as track number. So two symphonies on one CD would be tagged as two different albums. I write the composer name as <first name(s)> <last name> which makes browsing for a composer by last name more difficult, but on the other hand it forces me to learn the first names of the composers

I'm now using the genres Classical, Symhpony or Chamber.

As far as naming the files, I've recently decided to include the movement number in the filenames, but not in the tag for the track name (use track number for that).

I've recently discovered that Id3v2 has some more useful tags - TCOM for composer, TPE3 for conductor, TPE2 for orchestra and TPE1 for soloists (I'm using a free Linux program called id3v2 to clean up my tags). I think Ogg has a number of tags for classical music, too.

One important question is how smart the program (or device) you use to browse the music is - if they allow browsing by composer for instance. At home (and to stream my music to work), I use the open source SlimServer (www.slimdevices.com). It seems to properly read the extra tags, but doesn't have a mode to browse by composer rather than artist, so I still have the composer in the artist field of all my tracks.

I usually browse by tags, so the file system layout is not so important, but I use <genre>/<composer>/<work>/<movement number><movement>.mp3 (the slashes being directory separators, so the actual file would only be the movement name). Of course this gives a collision if I would have multiple recordings of the same work, but I don't have very many of those yet.

One irritating issue is how cddb and freedb are both inconsistent in naming composers (should it be Bach, J.S. Bach, or Johann Sebastian Bach, or Bach, Johann Sebastian...), and sometimes list composer as artist, and sometimes don't list composer at all.

There really should be a cddb-equivalent with more detailed information, and stored as a relational database, so that one composer is always spelled the same way.

Another difficulty is language - should it be Anton Dvorak or Antonin Dvorak (not to mention the accents in his name!)? Same issue for some works which have translatable names. I don't really have a good suggestion for that one. Ideally, the tag system should allow storage of different language versions of each tag. It seems that id3v2 has some system for multilingual comments, but only for comments, and not any tags as I understand it.

Well, I don't know if I answered anything or just brought up more questions It'll be interesting to see what thoughts others have on the matter.

 

[Permonic]

Quote:

Originally posted by erl Another difficulty is language - should it be Anton Dvorak or Antonin Dvorak (not to mention the accents in his name!)? Same issue for some works which have translatable names. I don't really have a good suggestion for that one. Ideally, the tag system should allow storage of different language versions of each tag. It seems that id3v2 has some system for multilingual comments, but only for comments, and not any tags as I understand it.

Original name is "Antonín Dvoøák" (hope you see it correctly in your browser), there is a wedge over "r" and a acutes over "i" and "a". Thus without diacritical marks, "Antonin Dvorak" is correct.

 

[adhoc]

hi, perhaps my method of tagging might be useful to you - it allows for quick intake of long piece-names at a glance, and is (imo)very useful for those who listen to classical music on portables (small screen space).

it does not use any of the extra fields offered by the newer tags. it simply uses just the 'artist' and 'title' field.

i use abbreviations, ';', and arabic numerals. i do not use full names to fill in 'artist' as it is (imo) unneccessary; i dso not own any pieces by, say, both gustav and alma mahler or karl nielsen and rudolf nielsen so there is no danger of confusion for me. i mean, how many dvoraks can there be?

conductor, year of recording and studio/live is noted in the 'info' field.

examples of some abbreviations i use:

symphony - symp.
suite - ste.
movement - mvt.
book - bk.
dance - dnc.
scherzo - schz.
etude - etd.
piano (instrument, not notation) - pno.
prelude - prel.
flat (key notation) - b
sharp (kep notation) - #

and so on and so forth.

so a (fictional) piece with a long name in the format <artist> - <title>, like:

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus - Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.23 in A-flat minor; II. Allegro Maestoso. Andante.

might be shortened without losing any info to:

Mozart - Pno. Conc. No.23 in Ab min; 2. Allegro maestoso. Andante

or perhaps:

Schubert - Etd. No.12 in D# maj, Op.12

alternatively, for poly-movement pieces, i might store the music with the format <artist> - <album> - <title>, like this:

Mozart - Pno. Conc. No.23 in Ab min - 1. Allegro maestoso. Andante

this allows for easy seeking and reading of titles on a portable player. naturally, ymmv.