#musicbrainz

does anyone here make music?

Several people, although I can't say how many (I don't)

What kind of music?

(making music is not the focus of this channel, archiving information about music is)

We make the beautiful music of high quality data.

... and a thousand TAB keys clicking furiously

hi guys, i'm using the very cool "add cluster as release" plugin in picard and not having an issue with an album that is truly a "various artists" album but does have three tracks out of eight by the same artist.

When I add that cluster as a release it automatically puts in that artist with three songs as the release artist. I figured I should just change that to say Various Artists but then it changed all three track by that guy to be "Various Artists" too.

So I changed those back to be his name and thought I was good, but then in the summary page it still tied in the guy's name with "Various Artists". So I cancelled the add.

Am I stuck adding the release manually or is there some way I can change that so it treats the album as a true "Various Artists" album?

err remove the word "not" from my first sentence… terrible proofreading

ocharles: thanks, good to hear

any classical style folks here?

danoply, I might be able to help

what do you put in the artist field for tracks that are "traditional" or "anonymous" songs?

i am adding this album:

Since it seems to fit the criteria of a "recital" I am using Dale Warland Singers as the Release Artist and filling in the composers as the Track Artists

but as you can see several of the songs are old traditionals that don't list a specific composer

I will be adding several albums like this so I want to make sure I do it correctly

We have [traditional] and [anonymous]

I wouldn't apply "classical" style to that release.

oh really? it's a choral group, which usually appears in the classical section (allmusic, etc.)

The purpose of the classical guidelines is to handle releases that either are...

...1. part of the "composer-centric" western tradition (e.g. baroque)

...2. have tracks by those composers which weren't given "titles" in the modern sense, but are simply known as "symphony no. 2" or whatever

"Woman uses pepper spray during Black Friday rush"? For buying videogames? People are completely mad

that is, it's not so much about "genre"

CallerNo6, hmm, while that's why they were *created*, I'd argue we should try to apply them relatively consistently...

Having the same choir or orchestra have some recordings attributed to itself and some to composers is... weird

ok so this is another release by the same artist, that does appear to be in classical style… is it more appropriate for that style or should it be edited?

reosarevok, yeah, I agree. I meant compilations of tracks that are all or mostly from that "composer centric" tradition

I meant even in different releases

(in one release, it's just absurd IMO)

(in different releases, just weird)

well, consider the "classical cover" rule... context is everything

anyway, danoply, we do have special purpose artists for [traditional] and [anon.] when needed, and when using the classical guidelines it would be correct to use those artists (with brackets) as the "composer" and "track artist"

in the track listing, some tracks show a composer of "American Traditional", "French Traditional", "Traditional Spiritual", "Anonymous", etc. Do I use those exact titles as artists or do I simplify them all to [traditional] and [anonymous]?

there's a list of existing "special purpose artists" at http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Special_Purpose_Artist

Heh

That's actually a very good question

Does [traditional] support artist credits? :)

ah, thanks for the link… looks like it should just be boiled down to [traditional] then

If it doesn't, it should

(I mean, from a style point of view)

(it clearly will from a technical one)

Agreed. I'd vote "yes" if danoply uses ACs for [traditional] as "French Traditional" etc

you've lost me. I'm still trying to figure out whether classical style is appropriate for this release… the ambiguity is driving me crazy

Sorry. Back to that...

i understand why you say it shouldn't though… the songs on the release arent really classical

they are folk songs

i assume it would work the same way if a symphony orchestra was performing the same songs?

Good question.

:)

i have actually avoided ripping much classical because the tagging is so hairy

but I am tired of not having this album on my mp3 player :)

first, here's brianfreud's take on the general question of "who exactly is a classical composer": http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Proposal:CSGv2#Who_i...

We have much better *potential* for classical-ish stuff now

But we still have to really decide how to use it

yeah i read about that

i'm just big on standards and it looks like there's nothing fully official as of yet

okay. cool. Now consider http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product...

but i will settle for consensus :)

Not all the tracks are "classical" but the context is. It's mucis being presented in the traditon of compser-centric recitals.

lol

looks like the vast majority of those tracks are by composers I would consider classical

Yes. My point is, I'd decide it based on the context more than on the ensemble or genre. Personally.

Your hypothetical symphonic folk recital is something I'll have to think about.

makes sense… so in this case when I'm looking through my music I generally don't think "oh man I'd really like to listen to some French Traditional, anonymous and Robert Lowry" but I rather would think "I'm in the mood to hear the Dale Warland Singers" sing some folk songs.

but in that case that's why I thought I would use "Dale Warland Singers" as the release artist with the composers going in the track artist fields

Yeah

The choir is for sure the release artist

btw I assume "release artist" = "album artist"

Yeah

Agreed on release artist.

so is the main difference then that if I use classical style i would use the folk song composers as track artists and if I use popular music style I would use Dale Warland Singers as the track artist for everything?

Yes

That's mostly it

so it comes down to whether its worth noting who composed those songs

As I imagine nothing here has movements, acts or the like, the titles won't need touching

heh, it's not even that simple

yep that's right

We have our way of specifically indicating who composed those songs

(inside MB - and using the Composer tagging field)

The question is more of a "what would be expected as the artist field in a player"

ah I thought I read that since many apps don't honor or display the composer tag it wasn't used

Hmm, I expect us to use it

i think it was in the wiki somewhere

let me see if i can find it

I am not sure myself :)

It might be more that we don't *depend* on it (as in, we put the composers as artists) because most players will ignore it?

it was in the classical faq

Putting the composer in the artist field means that the tagger uses that for ID3 artist! This is against the ID3v2 spec. Why do it?

Although the ID3v2 spec does say that artist is for 'Lead artist/Lead performer/Soloist/Performing group' most pieces of software will only use this field and ignore the composer ID3 field.

With classical you are usually more interested in the composer of a work than the performer. Until there is enough software that allows you to use the composer field in any way it seemed least damaging to do it this way round as otherwise it becomes very hard to use the composer info at all.

Yeah

So that's it I guess

Picard stores it in the tags

maybe that means composer is used but artist is used too… I dunno

But most software don't care

Honey badger don't care!!

Like honey badger

lol

\0/

can you explain the artist credit thing? Is there something I need to do there? I am leaning towards using the classical style for this release since this group usually performs that type of music and the existing release in MB by them is in classical style. Do I need to do something with artist credits if I use [traditional] and [anonymous] as track artists?

You don't *have* to

[traditional] would be good enough

i just dont even understand what it is or means :)

http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Artist credit

i should probably google it though rather than waste more of your time

(or http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Artist credits ?)

FUUU

heh

URLs dont like spaces

i will find it, no big deal

http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Artist_Credit it is

But the page is not too good

I don't think there's a decent "how to" for ACs, is there?

No

CallerNo6, go write one

lol

It's on the list

But basically, it means you say "Artist X" (its name on MB) appears here as "Variation Name Y"

right after "remodel an apartment on my own so I can move into it and not become homeless"

For example: "A Silver Mt. Zion" credited as "Horribly Complicated and Random Band Name La-La-Ding-Dong"

ooh ok this ties into my previous question then...

CallerNo6, remodeling is for weaklings. Real people endure the conditions!

(also, you're not going to freeze to death in the Bay Area :P )