Paul C. Bryan wrote: > Disclaimer: I'm a relative newcomer to classical and opera styles within > MusicBrainz.
I'm glad to see you here :) > > I guess my first question is, if I were to happen to purchase this > release, and put it on my MP3 player, would I have enough context when I > see "93. Chori: Wahrlich, dieser ist Gottes Sohn gewesen" to know this > is from Bach's St. Matthew Passion? Would I know especially if I was new > to the work? I wouldn't be sure about this either, but I could make a fair guess as I know the SMP some, or I could check the album title. But why do you need to get this from the track titles? Don't MP3 players show information about the album? When I started with MusicBrainz I thought I needed this from track titles as well, but experience has shown me I don't. More important: track titles are not and will not be a substitute for other resources, possibly online. > As a relative newcomer, one of the reasons I have embraced > ClassicalStyleGuideline and OperaTrackStyle is the fact that most music > players are braindead when it comes to displaying useful information > about the track they're playing, and MusicBrainz has (intentionally or > inadvertently) addressed this with its current style guidelines. The useful part I left out would be "Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Part II, LXIIIb." (Note 1: The booklet does not include LXIIIb etc. - though the recording splits the tracks at the right borders according the text for LXIII and others. Note 2: AFAICS from googling, it's only we at MB who use LXIIIb, others use 63b. This should be taken as a strong hint that we're doing something wrong. Note 3: The director, who is a Bach scholar, calls it "Matthew Passion", not "St. Matthew Passion", so I won't go against his wishes. If I am not voted down, you will not see "St. Matt..." in ReleaseTitles or TrackTitles for this one.) In a normal listening context the LXIIIb is not much interesting, IMO: In the 161 minutes this release lasts, titles fly by, and you're better off concentrating on the music and the text, and the LXIIIb is only distracting. (And if you have the text, you don't need this information.) I'd say my shorter title provides a reasonable default suited for listening. It is dead easy to find the dissecting numbers 244 and 63b if you need them (and most people don't). > > I guess my second question is, should MusicBrainz be trying to > compensate for crappy music players, No. That being said, it surely would be a positive benefit if MB tags showed up well even on crappy players. If you have little screen real estate, perhaps the title is scrolling or something, then for a 9 seconds long track like Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Part II, LVIIIc. "Desgleichen auch die Hohenpriester" (Evangelista) you might not even get to see all of the title. Surely this is not helping anyone, or? > decently normalized data structure that can be adapted to braindead > music players through tagging software? I personally think the latter. > I don't believe the dumb-my-classical picard plugin will ever be made. The space of existing classical titles is so diverse that you'll have a hard job making it useful for anything else but the most common structures. > Maybe works could help get us out of such a debate to some extent if we > could begin to attach information to the work, and leave the redundant > information out of the individual movements or arias. If that's not > currently in the works, then it's something I'd certainly support seeing > in the future. > As I understand it, we're getting there, and this would then allow for the tagger to pick titles from the WorksLists in stead of the Release TrackTitles. (In parentheses: I would be surprised if we do not find it rather cumbersome, as e.g. opera tracks are split up in different ways and this would possibly result in the need for multiple representations of one work. How should these be connected? What about different versions of the same work? I'm also guessing that in reality it will be less useful for end users than the premises for recent discussions seems have it. But let's hope I'm wrong :) > However, until we have a more robust data structure to store such > information, my vote would be on supporting the ClassicalStyleGuideline > and OperaTrackStyle, even if it results in increasing the size of track > titles. > > BTW, personally when I am tagging a release that exclusively > encapsulates an artist's classical/opera work, I tend to remove the > redundant information from my own track title tags, because my music > player is not braindead and I don't want to see the redundant > information during playback. This makes me more curious as to why you think it is necessary to have all the extra bits in the track titles... > Disclaimer: The words of the writer above is from a relative newcomer to > classical and opera tagging in MusicBrainz. Pregnant women, the elderly, > and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to his opinions. > This newcomer may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. Do not taunt > this newcomer. > I hope I am not :) Leiv _______________________________________________ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
