... but at the time the people who participated agreed that to be able to adjust artwork, Playlists was the only option. If they were wrong... off with their heads!
In the screenshots Roderick posted, I don't like the bottom one: so much wasted space with the panes on the top half of the screen. I tried using that and rejected it. I like the look of the top one though.
Using Playlists is not the only option. That was a wrong decision. As I said before, it is the worst option.
Getting the look of Rod's top screenshot presents no challenge. Simply create a view, select View as Panes, and ensure "Support Tree Browsing" is checked. This will give you the style of navigation you currently have, expanding things in the tree on the left, and when you actually select something, it will take on the general layout you see in Rod's screenshot. You merely have to configure the columns you want, and you know how to do that already.
The key to making it work is to have your music tagged correctly. Before we get into what specifically you need to do, let's talk about tagging classical music a bit.
First, we need to talk about the [Artist] tag. In popular music, Artist always means the performer. If Sinatra sings it, it's a Sinatra song; no one cares who wrote it. But Artist is a generic word with ambiguous meaning, so unfortunately there is no universally accepted standard for what it means with regard to classical music:
- Some people use this to hold the individual performer playing the piece. This makes sense for solo piano, but makes no sense for an orchestral work. Soloist is a tag better used for the individual performer, in my opinion.
- Some think Artist is the Conductor, for orchestral works. (The Conductor tag exists for this purpose)
- Others think Artist is the Orchestra, for orchestral works. (Use an Orchestra tag for this purpose)
- Some think Artist is the composer, as that is the person most responsible for the piece in classical music. I am one of these.
So you can see, for classical music some of the uses of Artist equate to Performer, and some to Composer. One might create a tag called Performer, which might be equal to any one of the other 4 tags, if one wanted to avoid any inconsistency.
You are using Artist as Performer, with whatever inconsistencies that forces upon you.
You are also using Composer, in the normal way. This presents no problem.
Finally, you are apparently using "Genre", at least you used that word in your description, but you are using it wrong. I say this because unlike Artist, Genre does have a generally accepted term for tagging. The Genre for all Classical Music is "Classical". You should not use that tag to hold words like "Piano Concerto" or "Symphony", as doing so will cause problems later. Automatic tagging software or databases will never put "Piano Concerto" in the Genre field.
Instead, create a user defined field to hold this. I suggest [CompositionType]. [CompositionType] can hold the type of composition it is: Concerto, Violin Sonata, Piano Sonata, Symphony, Fugue, Suite, Choral Work, etc etc etc.
So I would suggest you create this [CompositionType] field, and fill it out correctly for all your classical tracks. This will be easy and quick if you already have them grouped that way.
So this brings us to how you construct your view.
Show Categories in this order:
Composer
CompositionType
Artist
Album
Using this view structure, if you have your tags filled out for all your files, will instantly and automatically generate the tree structure you desire, for all your albums. You would browse through Bach->Suite->Andras Schiff->French Suites
(I would strongly urge you to use a separate view for classical music than for popular/rock music. For obvious reasons, imposing the above structure on albums like Thriller would be exceedingly clumsy.)
You could add another level, Composition, under album (or even replacing it), if you give MC an understanding of classical compositions. Read my tutorial here for information on that:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=122114.0The biggest benefit given to you by this approach, other than automatic generation (so that you no longer need create playlists) is that you can create new views, or reorganize instantly. Nothing is to stop you from creating another view with a hierarchy of:
Artist
CompositionType
Composer
Album
In that example, you could browse Andras Schiff->Suites->Bach->French Suites
More to the point, the top level would show everything Schiff played by type of composition. Then it would show by composer. Or you could reverse it, so that directly under Schiff, it showed all the different composers he played.
All this reorganization can be done in seconds, whereas for you it is a manual process of moving and reorganizing playlists and playlist groups.
I hope all this makes sense.