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[reichsa]

I'm new to JRiver and seek the assistance of experienced users. I have an extensive classical music library that has been organized over the years in iTunes. I'm drawn to JRiver because of its ability to allow me to tag orchestra, conductor, soloist, etc. But what I'm really looking for in a media player is the ability to shuffle classical music by work. Recent additions to iTunes allows me to organize my music by work and then put the individual tracks of movements as subordinate to the work. So when I shuffle by song in Apple Music it plays through an entire symphony (all movements) before shuffling to the next classical work. The problem happens when I stream that library onto my iPad. Shuffle in Apple Music in the iPad only shuffles by track, so it shuffles from movement to movement across works rather than play through an entire work, from first movement to last, before shuffling to the next one. Apple support claims that iOS does not have the same capabilities as OS.

Is it possible to set up JRiver to shuffle in this manner and does the JRemote approve user the flexibility to set rules on how it shuffles a music library? And if so, how does one do set shuffle to operate in this manner.

I appreciate any help that people have to offer. Thanks.

[JimH]

Linked Tracks might work:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=90543.0

[HaWi]

Linked Tracks might work:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=90543.0

Was just typing this:
There is a feature where you can link tracks (select tracks, e.g. all movements of a symphony, then <Right-Click> and select Library Tools/Link Tracks. I have a playlist "String Quartets" where I have linked all the correct files and when I shuffle the playlist MC26 shuffles it by work with the movements in the correct sequence.
Hope that helps.
Best regards,
Hans

[JimH]

I wonder if we couldn't add an auto-link feature.  Movements would need to be identified discretely (not part of the name, for example).

[DJLegba]

I wonder if we couldn't add an auto-link feature.  Movements would need to be identified discretely (not part of the name, for example).

Perhaps when the Movement tag is not empty

[HaWi]

Perhaps when the Movement tag is not empty

The issue is that there is no standard as to which tags come filled from a provider. The movement tag is empty in all my downloads. I usually have to manually adapt the track name for classical music to conform to my standard.
I found it the easiest/fastest then to just manually link the appropriate tracks. The only way to automate I can see would be to parse the track name which usually is partially identical for a particular work with movement numbers and descriptions differing, such as:

Arriaga: String Quartet #1 in D minor - I. Allegro
Arriaga: String Quartet #1 in D minor - II. Adagio con espressione
Arriaga: String Quartet #1 in D minor - III. Menuetto - Allegro - Trio piu moderato
Arriaga: String Quartet #1 in D minor - IV. Adagio - Allegretto

These could be linked by parsing/finding the identical part and then link those.

cheers,
Hans

[reichsa]

this appears to work. Thank you very much. I appreciate the help.

Steve

[HaWi]

I'm glad it works for you now.
cheers,
Hans

[wer]

There's a way to do this without linking tracks at all, relying solely on metadata and smartlists.  My process leverages calculated data, so you don't need to manually link tracks.

First, you need a user defined calculated field that automatically indicates which tracks (movements) are part of the same composition or work.  Here's a link to a tutorial I did a while back that explains how to create this field, which I call "Composition"  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=122114.0

Once that is defined, it is easy to create a view or smartlist that does what you want.  Here's the config of a smartlist I created that plays 6 hours of random classical compositions:


You can ignore the rule shown for "CompositionExclude".  This is an extra custom field I use to tag particular tracks for exclusion in other things I do; just omit that when you build your smartlist.

[wer]

I wonder if we couldn't add an auto-link feature.  Movements would need to be identified discretely (not part of the name, for example).

Jim what you're describing, in effect, is my Composition field.  It needn't be a link; MC just needs to be able to understand the concept of a composition or work, in other words a single musical piece composed of multiple tracks.  MC understands exactly one example of this currently: Album.

Album suffices for popular music.  It does not suffice for classical music.

I and others have been saying for years it needs to understand Composition to better support classical music.  As you can see in my other post, I do this through a calculated field that parses the track name.  It would be nice for others if that functionality was built in, and understood by MC at a more fundamental level, as Album is. 

[HaWi]

There's a way to do this without linking tracks at all, relying solely on metadata and smartlists.  My process leverages calculated data, so you don't need to manually link tracks.

First, you need a user defined calculated field that automatically indicates which tracks (movements) are part of the same composition or work.  Here's a link to a tutorial I did a while back that explains how to create this field, which I call "Composition"  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=122114.0

Once that is defined, it is easy to create a view or smartlist that does what you want.  Here's the config of a smartlist I created that plays 6 hours of random classical compositions:

This is a great idea. However, the problem for me is that my "end of Composition name" identifier is a hyphen (-), usually followed by the roman numeral for the number of the movement. For reasons I do not comprehend, some of these hyphens are different from others (even though they appear to be identical visually, so it's not like one is an – and the other one a -) and are not identified when I try to "find" them with an expression. So using listitem([name],0,-) to define the Composition field only finds a subset of all my compositions.
Does anyone know why there are different "types" of hyphens (and other special characters as well, I have found)? And more importantly, what can be done to get rid of this problem?

many thanks,
Hans

[wer]

It's not a problem I've run into, but yes there is more than one character that looks like a dash.  Sounds like you will need to clean up your track names. As I pointed out in the tutorial, it is essential you have a consistent naming scheme.

I prefer to use a colon, since some artists might have hyphenated names. A semicolon could work equally well, but I use the semicolon as a substitute for illegal characters in file names.  Other characters I find visually annoying for that use. Dash is too oft used and is not a good choice for a separator.  Of course you can do as you like, but you have to be consistent.

One suggestion would be to find a track with a "dash" that does NOT match your normal dash search, then copy/paste the "dash" character from its name into the search field; that might let you find the others using the same character. Repeat until you've found them all.

On Windows there's a Character Map program that will tell the code for every character and will let you find all the dash look-alikes; not sure if you have a Mac equivalent.

[JimH]

You could fix the hyphen (dash) problem, I think.

On your keyboard, type a hyphen.  That's the "good" hyphen, the one you want to keep.  Now compare it to the others.  That should help you find the "bad" one.

Using the tracks you have, copy the bad hyphen to the clipboard and use it to do a "find and replace".  It's a Library Tool.  Replace the bad hyphen with the good one.

Select a few and try it.  If it works, do more.

[HaWi]

Thanks guys! I'll give the search/replace a try.
EDIT: Wow! This is incredible. Your help allowed me to fix this problem in less than 30 seconds!!!
Thank you so much, Jim!
Hans

[HaWi]

There's a way to do this without linking tracks at all, relying solely on metadata and smartlists.  My process leverages calculated data, so you don't need to manually link tracks.

First, you need a user defined calculated field that automatically indicates which tracks (movements) are part of the same composition or work.  Here's a link to a tutorial I did a while back that explains how to create this field, which I call "Composition"  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=122114.0

Once that is defined, it is easy to create a view or smartlist that does what you want.  Here's the config of a smartlist I created that plays 6 hours of random classical compositions:

You can ignore the rule shown for "CompositionExclude".  This is an extra custom field I use to tag particular tracks for exclusion in other things I do; just omit that when you build your smartlist.

So I have tried to reproduce this and I get a SmartList but even though I make the rule Genre = Any Classical I still get non classical tracks in the list (see screenshot - the background shows the actual list after pressing "Apply"
Any ideas why that is?
EDIT: This goes away when I remove the modifier  Expand "Artist - Composition" What does this do?
many thanks,

Hans

[HaWi]

It's not a problem I've run into, but yes there is more than one character that looks like a dash.  Sounds like you will need to clean up your track names. As I pointed out in the tutorial, it is essential you have a consistent naming scheme.

I prefer to use a colon, since some artists might have hyphenated names. A semicolon could work equally well, but I use the semicolon as a substitute for illegal characters in file names.  Other characters I find visually annoying for that use. Dash is too oft used and is not a good choice for a separator.  Of course you can do as you like, but you have to be consistent.

One suggestion would be to find a track with a "dash" that does NOT match your normal dash search, then copy/paste the "dash" character from its name into the search field; that might let you find the others using the same character. Repeat until you've found them all.

This does not just affect hyphens, it even affects spaces..., I had to find/replace some (but not all) of the spaces, too!
On Windows there's a Character Map program that will tell the code for every character and will let you find all the dash look-alikes; not sure if you have a Mac equivalent.

[wer]

Sorry for the omission, but I forgot to tell you one thing, that didn't come up in the tutorial because the tutorial didn't use smartlists.

To facilitate this kind of use in smartlists, I use two additional user defined fields.  They are both "Calculated Data" fields.  Create these two fields as below:

"Artist - Album - Composition"  =  Clean([Artist] - [Album] - [Composition])
"Artist - Composition"  =  Clean([Artist] - [Composition])

Don't include the quotation marks in the field name.

Once you create these fields, double check your smartlist is configured the same as my example, and then you will get the correct results if your tags are correct.  You might also have been getting a strange result because the fields were undefined.

You need to fix your "Remove Duplicates" line.  It does not match the example I gave you.

According to the rules you've defined, JRiver is only adding tracks tagged as classical.  If you are seeing tracks in the smartlist that you think are not classical, you should check their tags.  A track can belong to multiple genres, and you might have your music tagged incorrectly. 

[HaWi]

Sorry for the omission, but I forgot to tell you one thing, that didn't come up in the tutorial because the tutorial didn't use smartlists.

To facilitate this kind of use in smartlists, I use two additional user defined fields.  They are both "Calculated Data" fields.  Create these two fields as below:

"Artist - Album - Composition"  =  Clean([Artist] - [Album] - [Composition])
"Artist - Composition"  =  Clean([Artist] - [Composition])

Don't include the quotation marks in the field name.

Once you create these fields, double check your smartlist is configured the same as my example, and then you will get the correct results if your tags are correct.  You might also have been getting a strange result because the fields were undefined.

You need to fix your "Remove Duplicates" line.  It does not match the example I gave you.

According to the rules you've defined, JRiver is only adding tracks tagged as classical.  If you are seeing tracks in the smartlist that you think are not classical, you should check their tags.  A track can belong to multiple genres, and you might have your music tagged incorrectly.

Thank you so much! I have done as you suggested and it is working perfectly now. Btw, my tags were correct, the non-classical tracks disappeared as soon as the "Clean Artist - Album" field was created and correctly used. I found out because I originally forgot the closing ")" in the field definition. As soon as I corrected that, the non-classical tracks were gone.
many thanks again,
Hans

[wer]

Great.  You can get a lot of mileage out of the Composition field aside from just smartlists.  You can create views around it, and MC can automatically calculate ratings for entire compositions.  There are still some limitations hough, so it would be nice if JRiver had better native support for the concept...

But what you have is a good first step.  It makes classical music much more usable I think.

Have fun...

[HaWi]

Great.  You can get a lot of mileage out of the Composition field aside from just smartlists.  You can create views around it, and MC can automatically calculate ratings for entire compositions.  There are still some limitations hough, so it would be nice if JRiver had better native support for the concept...

But what you have is a good first step.  It makes classical music much more usable I think.

Have fun...

Yes, thank you. I agree, the composition filed is essential. Even iTunes/Apple Music has that capability (Work). Also, I am very bad at using MC’s expressions so I rely on other people’s help. Thankfully, this community is very supportive. Bob has helped me a lot as well to get my library in shape.
I appreciate you guys very much!
Cheers
Hans