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[locust]

I love J River, I need some help though. I have a lot of Electronic Music where many of the artists do remixes of other artists music that are not necessarily featured on any of their own albums. This is the same for song that Feature an artist.

I like to use the default Album Artist view scheme as well as the Artists view scheme.
I'll try to explain the best I can, I know this issue is a minefield. (I read the posts on Multiple Artist Album) (I think this is similar)

Say for instance the following Ep below (4Kuba - Funky Maiden), I want the all the tracks to appear under the artist 4kuba in both view schemes (Album Artist & Artist)

As for the songs that have other artists featuring in them and have been remixed (This is where it gets tricky), the Access Denied remix, I have other Eps from this Artist, I want this song to show up in both view schemes (Album Artist & Artist) under Access Denied. But I have no eps for Kid Digital, This track I want to appear under the view scheme Artist, under Kid Digital but not Album Artist (I want this because I want the Album Artist view scheme to include remixes &  songs that feature said artists but at the same time not clog up the list with lots of esoteric artists [That’s what my artist view scheme is for])

Album Artist:	4kuba
Album:	Phunky Maiden
Track List:	1. Phunky Maiden
	2. Phunky Maiden (Feat Mars)
	3. Phunky Maiden (Access Denied Remix)
	4. Phunky Maiden (Kid Digital Remix)

I've already managed to achieve this basically through trial and error, it took A long while though, but I think I've got there          
I hope anyone that can wrap there head around this can help me improve it and or find bugs with it. (I think it works but I have not retagged my music collection to test it
Completely yet.)

      
Below are extra fields I have created, when making the fields that are List (Semicolon Delimited) and have calculated data, you must Create the field, make it a
List (Semicolon Delimited) then close "Manage Library Fields" then reopen it and enter the calculated data.

Fields
Album Artists
Data Type:	List (Semicolon Delimited)
Calculated Data:	=[Album Artist (Auto)]
Relational:	Non Relational
Artists
Data Type:	List (Semicolon Delimited)
Calculated Data:	=listcombine([Artist Supporting],[Remixer],\,;)&datatype=[list]
Relational:	Non Relational
Artists Calc
Data Type:	List (Semicolon Delimited)
Calculated Data:	=if(isequal([Album Artists],[Artists],7),[Album Artists],[Artists])
Relational:	Non Relational
Artist Supporting	(This field is for songs that feature an artist)
Data Type:	List (Semicolon Delimited)
Relational:	Non Relational
Remixer	(This field is for songs that are remixed by an artist)
Data Type:	List (Semicolon Delimited)
Relational:	Non Relational

View Schemes

Below are the view schemes I use I know they are not truly Album Artist and Artist, but I've still named them that to save confusion.

Album Artist
	Expression: listcombine([Album Artists],[Artists Calc],\,;)&datatype=[list]
	Disc Type
	Year Album
Artist
	Expression: listcombine([Artist],[Artists Calc],\,;)&datatype=[list]
	Disc Type
	Year Album

Note that the Above Artist view scheme uses the standard Artist field not the Artists field I created

Anyway I hope I've explained it adequately

Thanks for your help.

Angelo

I made some errors but I've now rectified them. Also the Album Artist view scheme expression has been fixed, third time lucky

Thanks MrC I've updated it to ignore [ list ]

[MrC]

I made some errors but I've now rectified them. Note that where is says &datatype={list} the list should be in square brackets, for some reason them I put the word list in square brackets it would disappear when I posted. Also the Album Artist view scheme expression has been fixed, third time lucky

The problem is that [ list ] is BBcode and the forum software interprets it.  You can use [ nobbc ] [ /nobbc ] BBCodes around special items to disable this.  (remove the spaces).

[rick.ca]

I hope anyone that can wrap there head around this can help me improve it and or find bugs with it.

It seems you have a handle on the essential capabilities of MC in this regard. Other than that, I don't mind admitting difficulty wrapping my head around this. Part of the reason for this is my interpretation of certain aspects might be, "It that's what you want, that would be a way to do it." But from experience, I know "what I want" is something rather subtle that I'm often not aware of until I give it a try. So I suggest you go ahead and experiment, and when you run into specific issues, let us know. Now that you've laid this out the way you have, some of us can probably readily offer advice on specific questions.

[locust]

Thanks for the feedback rick.ca

I'll need to start re-tagging my files to see if I run into any problems and post back here for help..

[locust]

I've got most of my music retagged now. It works fine apart from one bug that I cannot overcome. I've simplified my calculated fields and expressions so ignore the 1st post. I am certain that it isn't the new calcualted fields and expressions are causing the bug because the old expressions got the same results.

My defualt view scheme uses the expression
=listcombine([Album Artists],[Calculated Artist],\,;)&datatype=[list]

Field Name	Expression	Description
[Album Artists]	=listbuild(1,;,[Album Artist (Auto)])&datatype=[list]	I've done this because I have some multi artist albums and I have opted to just using ;'s to seperate the artists in the Album Artist (Auto) field. The list build is so that I can draw upon the Artists field and the list will allready have seperated the Artists This in my eyes makes it easier to work with. (I am not too sure if this is how you are supposed to do it)
[Calculated Artist]	=listbuild(1,;,[Album Artists],[Artists])&datatype=[list]	This makes a list of the Album Artists and the Artists (Which includes Contributing Artists and Remixer)
[Artists]	=listcombine([Artist Supporting],[Remixer],\,;)&datatype=[list]	This combines the Artist Supporting and Remixer fields
[Artist Supporting]	N/A	This is a field that I manually complete for artists that feature on other artists songs
[Remixer]	N/A	This is for the artists that remix songs

Image	Description
	This is the image of my test ep, The artist is 4kuba and the album is Phunky maiden. As you can see from the left it is focused on the artist 4kuba. The first track, I added the 3 Daft Monkeys the the remixer field and thus it had filtered thorugh to the Calculated Artist field. You will see on the next image that I have achived what I set out to do.
	This is the view with the Artist 3 Daft Monkeys selected as you can see because they are the hypothetical remixer of the 4Kuba track that it will also show up in the 3 Daft Monkeys Pane.
	This is where the bug is at,the remixer of this track is 7 Hurtz but the album artist is Black Strobe. This would be ok if I had a 7 Hurtz ep but I don't. Is there someway to check if I have any other albums by the remixer or contributing artist and if there is not filter it out? I hope so.

I hope someone can help me with this. All I want it to be able to select one of my more common artists that have albums and eps and also see all the other tracks that they feature on or remix and are not necessarily the album artist in the same pane. I know I could just use the search bar but I want it just to function this way. I think it would be better because sometimes I have parties and other people can select music, they would not know or think to search the artist by the search bar.

There must be a way somehow if not I hope it gets considered for future development.

I thought if I could figure it out I could then try and group the remixes and featured tracks that are not part of the artists own albums or eps and create virtual folders at the top of the directory structure to make it easier to distinguish from the own releases and others pulled from elsewhere. I need to get the first part working though.

Thanks for your help..
Angelo

[rick.ca]

Is there someway to check if I have any other albums by the remixer or contributing artist and if there is not filter it out?

No. And since the library is not a relational database, I doubt it will ever do things like that. The only way I can see to deal with this is the way you seemed to be headed in the first place. That would be to use a separate [Featuring] field to record artists featured on a track but for whom you have no albums in your collection. In other words, you would record them in [Artists] only if you had at least one of their albums in your collection. However, this would require that you update such records whenever you add the album of an artist new to your collection. Perhaps an annoying chore you would rather avoid.

I suggest you experiment with a Panes View before committing to how to handle this. I think you'll find it handles such things much better than trying to use the tree. A pane showing all artist types can be used in include or exclude any particular artist from the results.

The attached screenshot illustrates how I handle this in my primary (Panes) view. Note that how I handle artists is fundamentally different, but I believe you could use panes in a similar manner. My [r.Members] is an Artist-relational field containing all the people who were ever members of [Artist]. My [Featuring] records other non-member artists featured on a particular track. I've only recorded that information where I happen to have it, so I haven't attempted to use it in my illustration.

What I done in the screen shot is select the Artist Pink Floyd. The Artists pane then shows Pink Floyd and all it's members (and it would also include any Featured artists, if there were any). One of those members is Syd Barrett, who left Pink Floyd in 1968. My library includes his 1970 album Barrett. Since I'm using [r.Members], Syd Barrett is associated with all the albums of Pink Floyd, but I can use this pane to include or exclude his solo album, and the Artist\Album pane is updated to show this. If it were important to me to distinguish between Members and Featured artists, I could do so by showing separate panes. 

[locust]

Thanks rick.ca

Shame J River isn't built around Relational databases. I would be nice if it had both and the users could decide which one they want (Or both [I'm not sure if that is possible])

I see what you mean,although I don't like the way panes feel to use. I suppose you could say I am a late adopter to different ways of doing things (Before J River I was using Windows Explorer coupled with Winamp and just folder surfed to get to my music {A lot of clicking} I never used Winamps' library, partly due to laziness in the tagging area and it looked horrible)

I may experiment with panes in the future.

I see it as a mammoth task tagging it the way I want but only until I've completed it, then I'll have to stick to a stick routine of checking for remixes when I import cds of new artists. I see it as only one added step for the results I desire.

To conquer this I have made a field called "No Albums" with an Acceptable Value of "None"

I've altered the expression of the view scheme to take this into account.
=listcombine([Album Artists],if(isequal([No Albums],None,8),,[Calculated Artist]) ,\,;)&datatype=[list]

I can't foresee any problems this way.

I understand what you meant but I'm not ready to disband the directory tree way. (I have a small monitor, so the panes would take up alot of vertical space)

Thanks again
I'll repost if I rerun into problems

[locust]

How would I go about adding the Remixes and featured artists tracks to a virtual folder at the top of the directory structure in conjunction with all the calculated fields and view scheme expressions I have already used?

[rick.ca]

Shame J River isn't built around Relational databases. I would be nice if it had both and the users could decide which one they want (Or both [I'm not sure if that is possible])

Not really. It's unlikely the same level of performance could be achieved. It's also difficult it imagine a relational database being as flexible as the current one—in a way that wouldn't be way beyond the ability of most users to cope with. Besides, there are ways to add relational behaviour to the existing architecture (e.g., as has been done with the addition of relational fields).

I understand what you meant but I'm not ready to disband the directory tree way. (I have a small monitor, so the panes would take up alot of vertical space)

The utilization of screen space need not be much different, and could even be less. The tree can be collapsed and panes placed vertically on the left, or "collapsed panes" used. You can even add a "File path" pane that will do pretty much the same thing as the tree, but will work properly with the view.

How would I go about adding the Remixes and featured artists tracks to a virtual folder at the top of the directory structure in conjunction with all the calculated fields and view scheme expressions I have already used?

Use a Panes View.

[locust]

Thanks Rick.ca

I think I'll keep trying, to get it to work as well as doing it with panes, I like having dual functionality.

Would it be possible in future development, that you could theoretically make the ability to make one field truly relational?

Say for instance this is plausible. I don't know how it would function but this is how i think of it.

The field I would use would just be used to flag other fields. I would call it "List Of Album Artists" it would be a semi colon delimited list

I would use list build as the expression to populate the field with album artists, here is where I think it could function different from other fields. Instead of data populating information for each individual file, the list build would build a semi colon delimited list and store it in a text file. It would contain of all the Album Artists (Or whichever other field) in one list. J River would have to periodically update this list (Probably dependant on specific events), so it would be probable that a limit would have to be set upon the number of these fields that could be used to keep performance up.

I could then use this [list of Albums Artists] in conjunction with my [Calculated Artist] field to filter out all of the calculated artists are not listed in [list of Album Artists] (Which is essentially a text file that bears no relation to any files)

I would then get a nice Album Artist view scheme that would contain all the remixes, appearances and featured tracks only if the artist in question actually had an album of their own.

I don't think this is relational because its just a list to check a non relational field against.

For me this functionality would open up lots of new possibilities without being too cumbersome to wrap my head around. (I'm not sure on performance though)

Thanks again

[rick.ca]

I don't think this is relational because its just a list to check a non relational field against.

I have no doubt an ExistsInDb([Field], value) function would be useful for all sorts of reasons. So useful, in fact, there must be very good technical reasons why it hasn't yet been implemented. I don't have the technical background that would allow me to guess those reasons might be.

Regardless of how further development might solve a particular "issue," you have to accept the priority of any development task is going to be determined by the need and utility for users as a whole. Something like this, where there are alternative means for achieving pretty much the same results, is going to have a relatively low priority.

As I've pointed out, this sort of thing is handled very well in a Panes View. The result is flexible, easy to use, and doesn't require any convoluted data handling techniques. You can also achieve the exact result you're looking for by maintaining the data necessary to do so (i.e., keeping "featured artists" separate from "artist with albums in the collection"). That, of course, is a manual task subject to error and omission, but it's not difficult do. MC offers the tools necessary to make the task of checking an updating such a relationship quite painless.

Also, consider this irony. Where a competitor offers no choice in how something is done, MC may provide 19 options or ways of doing something. This results in two complaints: (1) There's so much choice the entire program is too difficult to understand and use. (2) The program sucks because it doesn't provide option #20. It may more productive to focus on how to use existing capabilities. That keeps most of us busy for a few years, assuming we can also keep up with new developments.

[locust]

Thanks again,
I will experiment with the panes, I'll keep pushing for the Db field every now and again. Maybe in a few years once computers are significantly faster, I understand there is a whole raft of other issues that are more important than this but nothing will ever happen if no one asks/requests it. Some sort of Db field would be in my eyes the holy grail of functionality.

[Gl3nn]

The attached screenshot illustrates how I handle this in my primary (Panes) view.

Hi Rick,

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread but I forgot to ask when it was current.

I'm interested in your "Filters" column in this view.  I'd like to do something like that.  Are "filters" playlists which you created? 

Could I trouble you to describe the details on how one does this for the view?  I'd be grateful.

[rick.ca]

I'm interested in your "Filters" column in this view.  I'd like to do something like that.  Are "filters" playlists which you created?

I anticipated your question and changed the name of the pane to "Search Lists," since that's that's what they are.

Just make the Category/Pane a "Search List" type. Then each item added to the list is an independent search. Those would normally be just like a smartlist, but can also reference any existing playlist using the rule: Playlists is any (playlists selected from dropdown). The actual search uses internal playlistid's to associate files with playlists.

[locust]

Hi Rick

Just to let you know I've gave up on that fools errand, too much hassle. Panes are much better...

Was just wondering in your images you have Genre/Style and Artist/Album, how do you get them to nest like that??

Thanks for your advice it was Top Notch 

[locust]

never mind, I figured it out

Thanks again

[Gl3nn]

I anticipated your question and changed the name of the pane to "Search Lists," since that's that's what they are.

Just make the Category/Pane a "Search List" type. Then each item added to the list is an independent search. Those would normally be just like a smartlist, but can also reference any existing playlist using the rule: Playlists is any (playlists selected from dropdown). The actual search uses internal playlistid's to associate files with playlists.

Thank you Rick.  Apologies for not responding sooner - computer issues. <sigh>

I may have more questions when I return from a short trip... I'm *so* dense when it comes to this! 

As always, I appreciate your help!

[Gl3nn]

Me again.   

Love the filters.  Didn't even know you could do that before seeing your response.  Really useful.

One more question: your [Genre] and [Style] fields are combined somehow as a "nested drop-down" in the pane.  How do you do that?

Many thanks for your help, Rick.

[locust]

Use

listbuild(1,\,[Genre],[Style])&datatype=[list]

I use the same Idea for

listbuild(1,\,[Album Artist],[Style])&datatype=[list]

 

[Gl3nn]

Wow, that's really neat!

Thanks so very much!

[rick.ca]

listbuild(1, \, [Genre], [Style])&datatype=[list]

This works, but ListBuild isn't necessary. Used this way, it's creating "[Genre]\[Style]" values, but it's &datatype=[list] that's making the result a list. So it could also be ListBuild(1, ;, [Genre]\[Style])&datatype=[list]—but this is the same as [Genre]\[Style]&datatype=[list].

How ever it's done, this only works because [Genre] and [Style] are both list-type fields. A more interesting question is how to create a nested list from [Genre] and [Styles], where the latter is a list-type field. ListBuild won't work because it will only combine [Genre] with the first item in [Styles]. Other style values will be listed separately, not nested under genre. This is what I came up with...

Replace(•Replace([Styles], ; , •), •, ;[Genre]\)&datatype=[list]

This first replaces the ';' delimiter in [Styles] with '•', and also places one in front of the first value (i.e., so each value becomes '•style'). Then the '•' is replaced with ';' (to restore the delimiter) and '[Genre]\'. The result is a delimited list of [Genre]\[Styles].

Thanks for making me rethink this. My boring [Genre]\[Style] pane has been replaced with [Genre]\[Style]\[Styles].

[locust]

That sounds cool Rick

I don't have a 'Styles' field. Do you mean the 'Display plural name' of the style field? Or is the Styles field another you created? How can I implement what you have done?

I am just about finished tagging my entire music collection. I am happy with everything apart from my style field.. Each tack has multiple styles attached to them, I've done this separating each style tag with the ';' delimiter. I don't like it this way..

I've made a flag field so I can mark correctly tagged style fields so I can easily find stuff that needs re-tagged, I plan to tag each individual track with it's own style not the overall style of the album... No easy task, I think the internet may be able to help me for some of it, But I don't know of any metadata providers that have track specific style information instead of album specific..

I like the whole searching by genre & style idea but I find it annoying when the distinction between styles become blurred in albums that are tagged album specifically. I have many multi style albums and eps and the range of styles can be quite diverse, so I find it frustrating when I click on Style A but the song I select is actually Style B all just because it is the overall album style that has been tagged..

For example I have one compilation CD that contains many artists and styles and is tagged 'Breakbeat; Breaks; Drum & Bass; Big Beat' but not every track is a drum & bass track.. I wish there were proper metadata providers for this because I don't think I have the musical knowledge to correctly identify the style of every track..

Thanks Rick

[rick.ca]

I don't have a 'Styles' field. Do you mean the 'Display plural name' of the style field? Or is the Styles field another you created? How can I implement what you have done?

I use [Genre] to classify music according to what I believe is the most common meaning of the word "genre." It's a high-level classification with values such as Classical, Rock, Jazz, R&B, etc. I use the stock string-type [Style] to arbitrarily subdivide [Genre] further. I've explained this in more detail here, here and here.

Those posts also reflect my belief there is no definitive source for Styles applicable to tracks. By their nature, they're vague and far from mutually exclusive. They weren't created by librarians, but out of music industry and popular culture—where commentators invented a term for some type of music. That might have been some or all the works of a particular artist, or a more general trend by a group of artists. The meaning of any one term likely changed and became more fuzzy over time. This is why multiple terms apply to one track, and why it's usually difficult to apply them in a perfectly consistent manner to an album. Their usefulness in describing the works of an artist probably depends on how varied those works are. So I'm not saying I haven't found any definitive source for Styles. I'm saying any source that claims to be definitive about something so subjective is lying.

That doesn't mean Styles assigned with reasonable care and consistency are not useful. Allmusic seems to be a good source by that measure. They also have some information about what the terms mean and data on the albums they've applied the terms to. (The terms are not applied to tracks, and it's unclear whether those assigned to artists roll-up from albums or are independently assigned.) Rather mess with something so subjective, I've chosen to import the Allmusic data to a custom list-type field related to [Album]. The data is related to Album anyway, but this ensures it stays that way once imported.

For example I have one compilation CD that contains many artists and styles...

I have very few multiple-artist compilations. Needless to say, my system doesn't even address such things—these albums are not tagged with [Styles]. I doubt I would care if had more such albums. If it's an artist I care about, I'll have some of their albums—and those will provide some style information (which I'll see in the pane that includes [Styles] when the artist is selected). I may even have the original album the track came from. In a perfect world I would prefer styles assigned individually to tracks, but I don't believe the reliable data of that type exists.

To illustrate my thinking further, I did have the choice of not making [Styles] related to [Album]. The "default" data for compilation albums would therefore be whatever was imported from Allmusic. I could then change the values for individual tracks so they agreed to those assigned to the album the track was originally released on (if it were in my collection). But why bother? If I had the original album, I could refer to it. For other tracks, I would only rarely find values different than assigned to the album and/or the artist. As for styles assigned to the compilation album, I'm not likely to do a better job of that than Allmusic. It's not that I don't care. If I'm interested in getting more or better information about a particular track than is provided by my more or less automatic tagging system, I can use search links to find other sources on the web.

[locust]

Thanks for the reply Rick,

I'll need to think about this one, it may take awhile as there were many valid points made in those posts. It will take time to absorb it all to take into account what has been said..

I think I need to overhaul how I've done this..

Currently some music belongs to more than one Genre i.e. 'Electronic; Folk; World; Country' From what I understand I am not supposed to use Genre as a delimited list type field? But I have done anyway... (I've done the same with the style field) What is the consequences of this? Compatibility with other programs?

Do you import the data from Allmusic into your custom field automatically?

I think I need to sort out Genre before I tackle styles. Do you know of any online resource that just has a list of Genres that I can use as a guide? I tagged Genre with the information from Discogs.com, which I don't think is that reliable for example. I have some music where the Genre has been tagged as 'Drum & Bass' but others that have the style tagged as 'Drum & Bass', the genre is tagged as 'Electronic'. This will not blend them nicely when using Genre as a higher level classification system..

Thanks

[rick.ca]

From what I understand I am not supposed to use Genre as a delimited list type field?

You can if you want. Although it's a string field, you can convert it using &datatype=[list]. But the more important question is what type of classification would work best for you? I want the ability to divide my collection into broad, distinct, mutually exclusive groups. That allows me, for example, to treat "Classical" almost as a separate collection. That's important to me because I collect different data for classical, view it differently, and always listen to it separately. The differences between my other genres (Rock, Jazz, R&B, etc.) are not as great, but I'm still comfortable treating them as mutually exclusive groups. I can, for example, easily listen to the one I'm in the mood for, but can still mix them up. To look at it another way, as the lines between two genres blur, I'm more inclined to merge them. What I will not do is assign the same music to two different genres. No matter how "correct" that might be in some cases, it creates more trouble than it's worth.

Do you import the data from Allmusic into your custom field automatically?

Yes, as described here. Unfortunately, it's a custom/personal solution. I don't know of any other practical means to get the data and get it into MC.

Do you know of any online resource that just has a list of Genres that I can use as a guide?

I suggest you use Allmovie. Not because they have the definite list, but because they offer lots of information that will help you decide what kind of list will work best for you. They list 16 "Popular Music Genres" here. I use 7 of them, some of them combined, others grouped under "Other" as styles. In other words, I've only used their genres as a guide for defining my own classification system. I assign [Genre] myself—I don't import it.

[locust]

Thanks Rick

I will  need to take a time out with this one and ponder with this one. I don't wish to make any brash decisions, I've done that before in MC wasting hours of time only to wanting it to function a complete different way..

I agree with making music only specific to one genre, it would be nice otherwise but you'd have to know your library inside out and tagging properly would be a nightmare, too many areas for error..

Thanks again for your advice.

[rick.ca]

I will  need to take a time out with this one and ponder with this one...

That's wise.

I agree with making music only specific to one genre, it would be nice otherwise but you'd have to know your library inside out and tagging properly would be a nightmare, too many areas for error.

This is why I suggest—if you choose to assign each item to one genre—to decide on a small number if distinct categories that make sense to you and the type of music you collect. If you do it right, you'll rarely have any question of what genre any particular item belongs in. There will be some that defy classification, but you'll be more comfortable arbitrarily putting in one genre if your system makes sense to you.

If you can find a way to automatically get style and/or genre data—even if it's not what you ultimately want to use—you still might use it to decide which of your own genre categories items belong in.

[locust]

Hi Rick, looking for some advice again..

For Albums that have multiple artists, I have opted to separate them in the Album Artist & Artist tags using ";".. This works great for me it allows any multiple artist album to show up under both artist names..

Replace(•Replace([Styles], ; , •), •, ;[Genre]\)&datatype=

I am wondering if I can use your expression to change the ";" circled in red in the image to a " & " for purely aesthetic reasons?

Here is the expression I use for Album Artist now "listbuild(1,\,[Album Artist],[Disc Type],[album])&datatype=[list]"

Is there anyway to alter your expression to do what I said and also possibly merge it with mine?



Thanks Rick..[/list]

[rick.ca]

The purpose of my expression was to create a nested list that could be used in a pane—it doesn't have much to do with this. You're using the default Grouping which uses an [Album] by [Artist] caption. You can't change that caption, but you can create your own. Create an expression field to produce whatever caption you like, and use that for grouping. Because it determines the sorting, and I record the year most albums are released, I use...

[Album Artist (auto)]If(IsEmpty([Released]),, / ● [Released]) ● [Album]

I'm not sure what you would want, given how you're using [Artist]. As for converting ';' to ' & ', just use the Replace() function to do that.

[HiFiTubes]

Thanks Rick.ca

I think I'll keep trying, to get it to work as well as doing it with panes, I like having dual functionality.

Would it be possible in future development, that you could theoretically make the ability to make one field truly relational?

Say for instance this is plausible. I don't know how it would function but this is how i think of it.

The field I would use would just be used to flag other fields. I would call it "List Of Album Artists" it would be a semi colon delimited list

I would use list build as the expression to populate the field with album artists, here is where I think it could function different from other fields. Instead of data populating information for each individual file, the list build would build a semi colon delimited list and store it in a text file. It would contain of all the Album Artists (Or whichever other field) in one list. J River would have to periodically update this list (Probably dependant on specific events), so it would be probable that a limit would have to be set upon the number of these fields that could be used to keep performance up.

I could then use this [list of Albums Artists] in conjunction with my [Calculated Artist] field to filter out all of the calculated artists are not listed in [list of Album Artists] (Which is essentially a text file that bears no relation to any files)

I would then get a nice Album Artist view scheme that would contain all the remixes, appearances and featured tracks only if the artist in question actually had an album of their own.

I don't think this is relational because its just a list to check a non relational field against.

For me this functionality would open up lots of new possibilities without being too cumbersome to wrap my head around. (I'm not sure on performance though)

Thanks again

I'm not sure I understand 100%, but are you trying to group together all of a particular Artist's work that is not on their albums (Album Artist)?


.....in that many comps would contain such tracks as remixes, appearances, etc. and become "hidden" from your cleaner Album Artist view scheme....

Years ago I decided to make a Custom Artist field (Featured Artists) and this would I could pull all examples of their work out into a Tile view, all the artist's work would fall under that tile no matter the actual album it was on. The result is a much 'cleaner' "Featured Artists" view using my Custom Artist field (that is also very complete since it includes all their work).

Right now I am trying to figure out how to make a Tile view using some Grouping tags my friend did. For each album, the Grouping field is e.g. Best of 1966-13, Best of 1966-14 etc.

Any idea how can I create Tile view (under one or two) View Schemes where each Best of Year is a Tile under which fall the relevant albums?

thanks! [/list][/list]

[locust]

I'm not sure I understand 100%, but are you trying to group together all of a particular Artist's work that is not on their albums (Album Artist)?

Yeah that is exactly what I was trying to do..

I managed to get it working in a sense.

To do it I made the following fields..

Supporting Artist
If a track has a featured or supporting artist, it will be entered here. If there are multiple artists they are both entered and seperated using the ";" delimiter.
Remixer
If a track is remixed by a certain artist, it will be entered here. If there are multiple remixers they are all enteres and seperated using ";" delimiter
Those were my information fields I then had to make some expressional fields to get the results I wanted. The way I seen it I have four fields; Supporting Artist, Remixer, Album Artist & Artist. I had to somehow merge that information and then compare it to the Albums Artist. If it was a match it would be combined in the View Scheme..
#List Album Artists & Artists
=listcombine([Album Artist],[Artist],\,;)&datatype=[list]
This expression comnines the Album Artist and Artist fields and puts that info in it's field..
#List Supporting & Remixers

=listcombine([Supporting Artist],[Remixer],\,;)&datatype=[list]

This expression comnines the Supporting Artist and Remixer fields and puts that info in it's field..

#Calculate:

=listbuild(1,;,[#List Album Artists & Artists],[#List Supporting & Remixers])&datatype=[list]

This Expressional Field just merges the previous two fields. I only did this because it made it easier for me to make an expression that would use the data in a view scheme.

To use all these fields I made a view scheme and added an expressional category with the expression "listcombine([Album Artist],[#Calculate],\,;)&datatype=[list]".

It worked but it listed every Album Artist, Artist, Supporting Artist & Remixer. I only wanted an artist to show up if they had an album of their own making a nice and clean list. My normal Album Artist count is 575 but in this new custom Album Artist scheme it is 3318. No matter what I tried I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted. So I opted to having a normal Album Artist pane right next to what I now call "Artists, Remixers & Featured". I mostly use the Album Artist pane but I quicky want to check all of an artists material, I can.. I don't think what I was trying is possible in J River but I've got close enough and learnt to live with it..