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Topic: Tagging Classical Music (An Alternative Take) (Read 1446 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tagging Classical Music (An Alternative Take)

After reading some great discussions on this topic, I want to share my two cents here.

Classical music involves more types of tags (composer/work/movement/role) and a greater number of tags (soloists/ensembles/conductors). Editing multiple tags of multiple tracks is thus error-prone. Take this album (Karajan conducting Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem) as an example (screenshot from Apple Music).



Let’s put aside some inconsistencies in the picture (such as different orderings of artists between tracks 2 and 4). The first track alone takes 9 tags (not counting album-level tags such as album title, genre, artwork, etc.):



To describe all 7 tracks, we need 59 tags, which can be reduced to 17 lines — no redundancy, no need to check over and over, and roles like baritone and soprano are also included:



Another example (Pletnev’s Carnegie Recital) shows such language is not limited to the above simple structure:



Which can be used to render an album view like this ↓:



This language I designed is called Tonal metadata language (a reference implementation is provided). But the concept is beyond any concrete implementation.

I hope this is inspiring, especially if you meticulously care about classical music metadata (like me). With some auto-completion features, it is also possible to normalize composers and works. Besides my app (which is macOS-only, and other limitations applied), can this idea benefit your workflows? I may need some time to offer proof of concept, but I am curious.

Cheers,
Baoshan

Re: Tagging Classical Music (An Alternative Take)

Reply #1 –
Have you had the chance to look at how the "Classical Extras" plugin for MusicBrainz Picard works?
In the least, that could give a hint on how to bake it into actual software.
Discussion and github link: https://community.metabrainz.org/t/classical-extras-2-0/394627/5
Plugin list with download links: https://picard.musicbrainz.org/plugins/

Re: Tagging Classical Music (An Alternative Take)

Reply #2 –
I'd be more intrigued to see booklets find their way into meta data.
Something like a tag "Booklet" or "Compagnon" where a PDF could be stored in addition to the stock cover art.

Companies like Outhere already supply high quality PDFs for the booklets from their labels, which contain much more valuable informations (notes by the conductor, historical background stories, photos of the used instruments/location/...) than any metadata language could provide. Often these booklets have also the layout quality level of coffeetable books, making them a joy to go through even on the screen.

I mean, I get the fascination to tag everything with utmost detail and precision, but personally well made booklets are more attractive to me, because they tell more than just data.

Re: Tagging Classical Music (An Alternative Take)

Reply #3 –
Quote from: pyr452 on
personally well made booklets are more attractive to me, because they tell more than just data.

I also enjoy the reading experience. I think digital booklets deserve some special treatment (like a standalone plug/app/whatever). Just wondering how long will the square (jewel box) shape last because it makes less sense nowadays.

Quote from: Porcus on
Have you had the chance to look at how the "Classical Extras" plugin for MusicBrainz Picard works?

Thanks very much for sharing that info with me. I just read its manual. I will try to figure out a simpler experience, but it is definitely a great hint.