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Topic: How do you pull traditional prop from easy thistening, oldies, or jazz? (Read 1328 times) previous topic - next topic
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How do you pull traditional prop from easy thistening, oldies, or jazz?

This is one of those things that twist me up: Placing music into the "right" genre. My collection is large and broad enough that it matters.

I thought I had everything figured out, with Jazz largely instrumental and big band stuff, Traditional Pop & Vocal being singular acts such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, the Mills Brothers, and so on. Then I began picking up what was clearly Easy Listening—instrumental covers of various pop tunes.

And then Doris Day comes along, and I read she is classified as Easy Listening, and so are all the acts I classified as Traditional Pop & Vocal. Apparently, certain types of singers and songs are tolerated and accepted by the Easy Listening cabal.

Going through my collection, I found Doris Day in collections of Various Artists, such as Time-Life's "Your Hit Parade," which I have under Oldies. I'm left wondering, how the heck does anyone parse this stuff out?

Oh, and those Traditional Pop acts I moved to Easy Listening? Well, they are also categorized as Traditional Pop. So, they exist in two genres. How do I choose just one? Where does Oldies end and Easy Listening begin?

I also recognize the only people who will get this post are those with wide and varied interests in music and very large collections. Others will simply get triggered, as misunderstood posts tend to do on the Internet. If this discussion does not resonate with you, please just pass it by,

Hoping to hear from others facing the same dilemma.

Re: How do you pull traditional prop from easy thistening, oldies, or jazz?

Reply #1 –
Quote
Where does Oldies end and Easy Listening begin?

Easy Listening I do think a genre.
“Oldies” is most of all a indication of “time” but a relative one.
In the 70’s the 50’s where the oldies, today the 90’s are.
So I don’t think it is a genre.
You better have the year of the release instead

It might help to have a media player supporting multiple values in the genre tag.
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

Re: How do you pull traditional prop from easy thistening, oldies, or jazz?

Reply #2 –
:( There's just no easy answer and you're not the first person to struggle with it.     You have to find something that works for you and you'll probably have to accept compromise...

I have a LOT of genres but I don't have "Oldies".  Some people just force everything into a few genres and some people have simply given-up.   Some people rely more on playlists categorized by mood or purpose instead.   Of course a song can exist on multiple playlists.

But I have researched & tagged the year (except in some cases where I couldn't find if).     That's the original release year if it was originally released on vinyl, or if I have a compilation or greatest hits CD where the release date of the CD isn't relevant. 

With iTunes (which only use on an iPod in my car) you can make an "automatic smart playlist" with AND & OR logic so for example, I have an "early 60's" playlist (that probably includes Motown & Soul but I don't remember at the moment) and a similar "early rock" playlist that includes the 50's, and playlists by decade that exclude special genre's like Christmas, etc.

I think the most important genres for separating-out different music  are the "unusual" or "special" ones -  I've got Halloween Music, Halloween Sound Effects, Mexican, Portuguese Fado, Patriotic, Zydeco, Dialog...    I have a Comedy genre and it really needs to be split into Comedy Music and Spoken Comedy.   

I'm just starting a new playlist of my favorites.   That's taking some time...   I might end-up with more than 1000 songs on that list. ...I've never "rated" my music and that would take "forever".. and I'd probably have a hard time deciding what rating to give songs that I don't love or hate!  :D    But while I'm at-it, I probably should give all of my favorites a 5-start rating...   Or, maybe I'll just rate my favorites and forget about the playlist...

Classical enthusiasts have different tagging challenges...


P.S.
I recently bought the new AC/DC album from Amazon -    It was tagged as Pop!   :D   I laughed and then changed to to Hard Rock, although call themselves a "Rock and Roll Band".
 

Re: How do you pull traditional prop from easy thistening, oldies, or jazz?

Reply #3 –
Related to your discussión, this:
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=120394.msg993688;topicseen#new

In the process of music categorizing and placing genres and styles in a "map" I found many of these problems. Maybe this web interest someone:
https://musicmap.info/

Short story: it's impossible to categorize most music using only 1 genre or style. If you try to do that you arrive to that paradox. Some genres are "supergenres", some are really small subsets. Some are mixes of styles, some changed during it's lifetime, etc.

That web gives a pretty good description of what is traditional Pop and what is Easy listening. For sure, traditional Pop can "contain" easy listening ... but not the opposite. Traditional vocal & pop had its roots on Jazz, gospel and Close Harmoney. While easy listening is an arbitrary mix of styles which related to jazz, by chance, on the 60s. But that changed as soon as electronic music became a reality.

Lyrics, moods, complexity AND the most important: public, are totally different too. i.e. some of the greatest vocal jazz artist like Sinatra did some elevetor music tracks... true. You got his bossa nova tracks which are clearly easy listening. But he did from a different perspective than easy listening artists.

Conclusion: Just tag relevant tracks as both genres, since they are in both places at the same time. When you compare individual tracks, they may be in different genre sets at the same time. It's when you compare the corpus of a genre against other genre, when the differences became obvious, not just with only 1 track or artist at a given time.

Re: How do you pull traditional prop from easy thistening, oldies, or jazz?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
I recently bought the new AC/DC album from Amazon -    It was tagged as Pop!   :D   I laughed and then changed to to Hard Rock, although call themselves a "Rock and Roll Band".

LOL! That is classic!