More > JRiver Media Center 27 for Windows
Feature Request: Better Support for Classical Music
wer:
MC is an outstanding music player and organizer, with unsurpassed audio quality. These qualities make it attractive to people who like classical music.
However, MC's support for classical music is not what it should be. Something is missing, and it makes managing Classical music in MC more of a pain than it should be.
To be able to properly support Classical music, MC needs to be able to support the Composition. I'll digress for a moment into an explanation of why, for those who don't know what I'm on about...
This request is not about tagging classical music. There are as many ways to tag classical music as there are collectors of it, and MC is infinitely flexible in how it allows you to tag and organize your music. This is about handling that music effectively and efficiently, in a way that's appropriate for the special nature of Classical music, to better facilitate the activities of tagging and playback, and this is where MC has a deficiency.
The issue stems from the fact that Classical music is unlike other forms of music in terms of structure. For most other forms of recorded music (Rock, Jass, Pop, Country, etc) the fundamental unit is the Track. Tracks are grouped together into Albums, but generally each Track is atomic: it is a work unto itself and indivisible. Each song on a Rock album is a Track, and each Track is a File.
But Classical music is different. The fundamental unit is the Composition. Each Composition is composed of Movements... But we don't listen to Movements. You wouldn't ordinarily pick just the 3rd movement of a piano concerto to listen to; you'd listen to the full concerto. But when the music is recorded, each Movement is broken out into its own track, and multiple tracks are required to have a complete Composition. This is how Classical is different. For other genres, the fundamental unit is one track, but for classical it is a set of several tracks.
And for MC, the fundamental unit is a File. MC recognizes Files (tracks) and it (sort of) recognizes Albums, but there's nothing in between. A Classical album might have 6 Compositions on it, but 24 tracks. MC just can't handle this properly.
What MC needs is to be able to recognize the Composition as a unit, and be able to handle it like it handles tracks and albums.
So I'm proposing that MC be enhanced to support Compositions. I think that means the following:
1. The ability to treat a Composition as a unit.
2. Recognize the user-defined Composition field. All tracks on the same album that have a common Composition field shall be considered part of the same Composition.
2. The ability to automatically recognize the Composition from the track names. I have described this formula before:
[Name]=[Composition]:[Movement]
The [Movement Number] is in dotted notation at the start of [Movement]
So for:
[Name]=Symphony No. 3 in A Minor: 1. Allegro
You get:
[Composition]=Symphony No. 3 in A Minor
[Movement]=1. Allegro
[Movement Number]=1
Movement info is extraneous and not required for Composition support.
Possibility for automatic parsing of Composition has been removed, since people could not agree on a standard.
3. Composition support in Playlists and Smartlists
4. In Views file list (bottom pane) and playlists/smartlists, be able to expand/contract Composition as with Stacks
5. Compositions can have ratings, and composition stats (rating, duration, etc) are accessible from the search language like with tracks, to support "Files to include" in views and lists.
6. Compositions can have relational fields, like an Album can.
With these enhancements, someone could add a composition to a playlist with a single click. If you rated the tracks that comprised a Composition, the composition would inherit a rating. Someone could make a smartlist that included compositions with a given rating. If you wanted to play a Composition, you'd know what the total duration was without having to add it up yourself. You'd be able to tag the Conductor or Orchestra for a Composition as a relational field, instead of being able to do it for each track. You could enter liner notes for the composition once, instead of for each track. Etc.
It would just make everything better for Classical music.
Some of these things can be achieved now, but doing so requires sophisticated knowledge of the expression and search languages.
I suggest it all be made easier by building in better support. Attracting Classical music lovers is good for JRiver.
creal:
Yes, I highly support improvements for organising Classical Music too. I have 14k+ Classical files but the way I structure them and display them in MC is not ideal at all. However, I can't think of using another audio software, it's excellent.
EnglishTiger:
+1
I have always been a Classical Music Fan but for years, out of personal preference, my classical music collection remained in that ancient 12" 33rpm Vinyl Disc Format. Far too often Media Player Authors/Creators forget that the vast majority of Classical Music pre-dates so-called Popular Music and don't provide the level of flexibility to handle it adequately. Let's take just one example of that "lack of attention to detail" that exists in the MC Tag Window - the location of Classical Music related Tags; in the Tag Window there is a section called "Classical" even though most of the tags displayed are common to both Classical and Popular Music, but the 3 tags that are, potentially, unique to Classical Music:- [Movement], [Movement Count] and [Movement #] are further down the Tag Window in the "Advanced" section.
Yes, I know we can customize the Tag Window but a far better approach would be to allow the user to specify which "section" of the tag window a tag they are adding should appear in.
This isn't the only area that needs cleaning up - another is the routine used to determine if an Album is complete or not - https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,128021.msg889866.html#msg889866
The ability to check that an Album is Complete appears to be unique to MC , but a routine that gets it wrong is not a very good selling point. It certainly gets me wondering just how many more places is MC providing me with wrong/bad info.
Wer is quite right when he said "However, MC's support for classical music is not what it should be. Something is missing, and it makes managing Classical music in MC more of a pain than it should be."
For years I'd been looking for a way to move my Classical Music Collection into MC but didn't like any of the suggested/recommended ways of classifying that collection I found in the wiki/forums, until one day I found a posting by wer outlining a tagging method, that I christened "The Grey Squirrel Tagging Protocol", that seemed more logical and involved a darn sight less work than any other suggestion/recommendation I'd previously seen.
Once I got used to that Tagging Method I discovered I could use it in a way that shortened the file and path names and that some of the additional tags especially [Date (Performance or Orig Recorded)] and [Recorded At] could be used with Popular Music.
Once I'd read that posting and asked wer to explain how and where to use the additional tags his method used just under 15,000 Classical Music tracks got added to MC in under 3 months. It may take me ages to properly tag all of them, mainly because a lot of the wrong/inadequate/bad metadata is being added at the ripping the CD to Disc stage; but I don't care about that as long as there enough metadata present to know what is currently playing, being able to listen to the music I like/love is far more important than making sure the metadata is 100% correct.
Another area where MC's support for classical music is not what it should be is TrackInfo Plugins. I've found threads/posts about Tagging Classical Music going back to 2008 but MC has never had a TrackInfo Plugin tailored for Classical Music. That gap is about be filled because, thanks to Matt and wer's help, MC is about to gain it's 1st set of Classical TrackInfo Plugins. Plugins that, thanks to a revolutionary new TrackInfo Template that Matt made possible, will tell the User more about the Track they are listening to and the Album that track is from than any previous TrackInfo Plugin.
This set of images will give you an idea of what I'm talking about - https://pix01.jriver.com/gallery/F9555BD5-69F7-4CF4-AE7C-C7452A4346FA/ET_Darkness_TrackInfo/
Images 5-7 are for the 3 web-pages that make up the Classical TrackInfo Plugin used with the Modern Cards Dark Edition Skin.
And Yes the "Tags Page" shown in Images 3 & 7 is the plugins doing a very good impersonation of the MC Tag Window, in a more readable way (the user gets to see all the content of every "Audio" related tag). Probably another area that needs cleaning up,
Hopefully once they are available for Downloading from within MC, just like me, Classical Music Fans will find it easier to correct any missing/wrong tag metadata.
Hopefully the MC Management/Development Team will both Read this thread, Absorb the comments and suggestions and Act On Them so that JRiver Media Center becomes the Media Player of Choice for most Classical Music Fans. Not next year or in the next decade but before somebody else decides to create a Media Player that is Classical Music Fan Friendly.
drmimosa:
I accomplished grouping compositions in a playlist using track links. I linked tracks 1-5 in a five movement work, and when track 5 appears in a smart list the composition appears as a unit.
I like it, but it took me a while to do across my library. I started with the composer I had the most tracks for, Bach, and went down the list in a custom view. Now I have the 20 most common composers in my library, 80% of my collection, grouped by composition.
Once you do this, smartlists start to resemble actual concert programs.
Posting here in case someone else finds this a useful idea.
Cinelder:
--- Quote from: wer on March 09, 2021, 11:01:11 pm ---"...
"...2. The ability to automatically recognize the Composition from the track names. I have described this formula before:
[Name]=[Composition]:[Movement]..."
... "
--- End quote ---
Love the idea. Would it be user-customizable?
For example, I include the composer before the composition (including opus) and use Roman numerals instead of Arabic for movement numbers, so, if I were naming the first movement of Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3, it would be "Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op.56: I. Andante con moto — Allegro un poco agitato"
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version