[mb-users] Album-based classical music

[Andrew Conkling]

On 10/5/06, Dave Smey <autodave at davesmey.com> wrote:
> On Thu, October 5, 2006 8:43 am, Andrew Conkling said:
> > while it took a bit more time tagging things on
> > my own, at least they were indexed logically.
>
> Now you've got me hooked, too - I wouldn't mind hearing about your own
> tagging plan.

Here's what I've been doing.  I'm going to spell it out here, but
someone more experienced with MB please let me know if this should end
up in the Style Guide Discussion or something.

Back in the MP3 days, I'd set my tags like this:

Artist: Composer
Track name: Piece name op.##.movement# in Key - Movement indications
Album name: Piece name (Ensemble, Conductor, Performer)
Year: Year

Later, to meet my needs, I moved the Ensemble/Conductor/Performer to
the Comment field.  (I'd go with the former now; I can see value in
having unique album names that I didn't see before.)

When I moved my collection to FLACs, I used the following:
Artist: Composer
Track name: Piece name op.##.movement# in Key - Movement indications
Performer: Ensemble, Conductor, Performer
Year: Year

This was nice because everything I used supported using the Performer
comment, so I didn't have to rely on the Comment field.

Either way, I had files named in the following manner:
musicroot/Composer/Piece (Ensemble, Conductor, Performer;
Year)/Composer - Piece op.##.movement# in Key - Movement indications
(Ensemble, Conductor, Performer; Year).

This solution has worked very well (and concisely) that it took me a
very long while (read: a number of encounters over a few years) to be
interested in MusicBrainz's way of doing things; everything seemed
(past tense, folks!) unnecessarily long and unclear.

I've used Dr. Tag on Windows and now EasyTAG on Linux to manage my
files.  Great programs.  Even so, it's a tedious process.  But, I do
end up with files and tags that are easily managed, and sorted
appropriately.

I have yet to be convinced that MusicBrainz can offer me better for my
classical tracks.

Cheers,
Andrew