Classical music - how do you organise your music?

I’m facing a similar conundrum having aquired more classical music as part of a New Years resolution to do so!

I have started doing the following which may work, still undecided.

• Created a separate folder hierarcy for Classical music, I am using the main performer at the moment for folders as some albums contain more than one composer’s work.
• Used the albumartist tag to signify the main performer, e.g. Angela Hewitt
• Been strict with the composer tag in respect of consistency, e.g. Beethoven, Ludwig Van. Oddly I find composers easier to locate by surname but performers by firstname.
• Using Asset I have created a separate UPNP instance called Classical and have set it to only index the classical subset of my library. My main Asset instance currently also indexes classical alongside the rest of my library. I amy stop this in the future.
• I have set the UPNP treet in Asset to be very different to my main library. E.g. I have Composer as the first option which immediately lists all composers with the upstream artwork. When I select a composer it then gives my a choice of Albumartist or Album. This allows me to view all albums that contain music performed by a certain arist or all albums with music by that composer.

I think I may look at a simple system for genres as well, not sure whether to use things like chamber music, orchestral, opera or go for periods, e.g. baroque, romantic etc.

This is still a work in progress but with a small classical library (500 or so albums) it’s still manageble and easy to spot improvements made and I think I may be on the right track with the above approach.

Some of these ideas may help but I would be very interested in learning of alternative approaches.

Richard

I work with genre then album. Composers too difficult to do data cleansing for (I have played with minim server’s capability to map N:1 composer name etc but it still requires a lot of work).

My cheap trick “fall over” solution is to include as much info as a possible in the album name tag itself ... 

I went with the UnitiServe’s way of ripping - Composer & Title, sorting by Composer.

I change all sub-genres into one; classical. This way it’s easier to browse.

I use dbPoweramp to rip,

Then I can place the ripped folder where I wish.

I use two main folders - Artist and Composer. I can then duplicate into either as I wish. Storage is so cheap it matters not.

I just cut and paste multiple composer tracks into the individual composer folder. Easy. 

Using the Asset Folders and Filenames search option I am presented with the folders exactly as I created them. 

Although incorrect... many people put the composer in the Artist tag.  Then instead of album put the work and possibly a conductor and/or orchestra identifier and the track title gets the movement name.

Whats important is to think what works for you.

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...357#1566878605876357 Has thoughts I’ve posted previously.

I use a simple filing nested system of genre (classical) then composer (surname first), in which go the albums. Album names are name of the work first (e.g. Symphony 2) followed by conductor, soloist if relevant, orchestra/ensemble (usually abbreviated e.g. RPO), and year of recording. Sometimes I think I might include subcategories under the composer level for, say, chamber, orchestral, solo instrument etc where an composer is prolific - but so far haven’t.

That way, filing music is straightforward and browsing/searching are easy - I generally think what I fancy playing in terms of piece of music and go to it (I remember most of what I have), then if there are several versions they are visible alongside each other with their names revealing which composer etc., enabling me to pick the one I’m in the mood for. But then at most I have only 3 or 4 versions, and the majority only one.

As for metadata, I put conductor as recording artist, or soloist when applicable. Composer goes under artist and composer. 

And I mostly split albums with multiple works into smaller single-work albums, especially of more than one composer,unless very short pieces or a themed album, in which case it goes in a folder at the composer level called collections - which works because  I don’t have a huge number of them.

The above suits my approach to choosing music, but co course wouldn’t suit people who think condutor first and then what the conductor has conducted.

I work with sub genres on my NAS like Classical Cello, Piano, Vocal, Violin, Orchestral, Other and Chamber Music. In the other section I have Guitar, clarinet etc.... just a function of the fact do I have enough albums under the sub genre.

I always try to distill to the main artist for non orchestral music, so even for Chamber with two artist i select one and categorize it under that name. In classical this means that I have sometimes artists in sub genre and Chamber Music. Under orchestral music I have symphonic music and ballet music. The Concertos I have under the sub genres like piano and violin.

For orchestral my naming convention for the artist is conductor - Orchestra, for the title of the album I always start with the composer’s and then the titles of the main pieces on the disc. If I have the same pieces in different years for one artist I then even add the decenium to the title to keep it separated....

This way has served me quite well, and I came to it after an in between less optimal organization.

I use Minimserver as a server and Kazoo as a client.

Minimserver is very versatile with excellent support.With Kazoo it is easy to find the location of your files on the NAS.

I use Jaikoz to tag the files:

For classical records (namely with tag GENRE=Classical) I use the tags COMPOSER, ORCHESTRA, CONDUCTOR, CHOIR, and LYRICIST

One day I will clean the ARTIST tags from all my classical records, by first erasing the composer, conductor and orchestra if present and leave the soloists and ensemble names. If there are several artists I will have each in a separate ARTIST entry.

ALBUMARTIST is of no use for Classical music.

Alley Cat posted:

 

Do you tend to search via Composer, Artist or something else.

 

If I know what I want to listen, most of the time I search by Composition (BWV 1016, C 90, etc.)

If I don't know exactly what I want to listen to I go for : Period -> Composer -> Composition -> Performer

But the key is Composition. 

For classical music, tags like album doesn't make sense.

For tagging correctly classical music I use MusiCHI Tagger.

You should consider it. It's really useful tool.

http://www.musichi.eu/index.php/en

Here are some videos on how to tagg classical music. Pay attention to the Composition tagg. 
Of course one can make his own changes based on search preferences. 
But IMO Composition should be tagged properly, especially if you have a huge classical library as I do.

https://www.youtube.com/channe...ESXt2NuDj8hXFoKjkQLg

I try to keep it simple and use the following scheme:

Haydn - Bernstein & New York Philharmonic/1962 Symphonies Nos. 45 & 57 [2017 24-96]

One folder for each composer / artist combination...

I arrange my classical music as follows:

Main folder - Classical then Subfolders: composer, multi composer compilations, artist compilations and label collections

Composer sub folders can be subdivided e.g. Shostakovich has symphonies, concertos, chamber/ instrumental and orchestral music sub folders.

Sometimes categorisation can be a bit arbitary. So the Louis Fremaux CBSO Complete Recordings is under Artist compilations - but it could just as easily have gone in multi-composer . Under label compilations I have a folders for all my Lyrita albums  etc, although these could just as well have been stored in composer and multi-composer compilations depending on album content.

I only access my music through the file view with the Squeezebox- I don't use album or artist to select music.

BN

Thanks all for the comments so far which I am reading and re-reading - many many good ideas here, and I think many have similar thoughts on file storage organisation.

I think much of the problem for me is that I tend to want to browse by composer and composition so had started to set up folders in that manner with sub-folders for different versions of a work.

What scuppers this is compilations of multiple works and artists, so perhaps just go with the headline work on the album for storage organisation.   Being something of an 'album' person I might be reluctant to split albums into mini-albums but potentially a very good idea.

Currently struggling to figure out why some recent Qobuz downloads won't play at all on the Nova.....

Try Roon. Many problems fade away.

David O'Higgins posted:

Try Roon. Many problems fade away.

Thanks David - yes I did a trial of Roon and did actually sign up until I accidentally killed my Macbook Pro which was the Roon Core, literally minutes after purchase - they kindly refunded me and I will revisit at some stage as I did like it, though confess I'd not added many classical items to the library at that time.

Alley Cat posted:

I find this quite frustrating and don't really know the best way to approach it.

Appreciate the metadata is key, but there are many problems.

Do you tend to search via Composer, Artist or something else.

If you look at say Artist/Album then a single album with more than 1 work or more than 1 composer's work often seems to get split into different artists, perhaps these need to be tagged as 'compilations'?

If I rip titles I tend to manually store by Artist/Album but this doesn't work for classical in the same way, so I tried a Classical folder with Composer name and sub-folders figuring I could then have say Vivaldi/The Four Seasons/ and several sub-folders for different versions - logical to me for storage hierarchy but falls down when you have several works on the same album from the same or different composers - perhaps best not to worry about it - I'm even considering having different NAS devices for classical vs other genres as the classical can mess up presentation with multiple entries.  Same goes for compilations of pop/rock I guess....

Any tips/advice gratefully welcomed.

I tag my classical music with "Composer", "Work", "Conductor", "Album", "Ensemble", "Artist", "Period" (meaning music era: contemporary, modern, romantic, classical, baroque, etc.), "Form" and "Genre". I tend to search my music via

Composer > Work > Album

or

Form > Composer > Album

or, more rarely,

Ensemble > Composer > Album

In my classification, I pay attention to distinguish "Genre" from "Form". The latter contains musical forms like for instance piano concert, violin sonata, string quartet, berceuse, symphony, tone poem, etc. In the MinimServer forum there are a number of threads dedicated to classical music classification. If you haven't already done so, I also recommend reading the MinimServer documentation. Because MinimServer has been developed by keeping in mind the needs of classical music listeners, the MinimServer documentation provides many interesting suggestions and easy solutions to the most common problems that one faces in organizing and tagging classical music contents.

nbpf posted:

 

I tag my classical music with "Composer", "Work", "Conductor", "Album", "Ensemble", "Artist", "Period" (meaning music era: contemporary, modern, romantic, classical, baroque, etc.), "Form" and "Genre". I tend to search my music via

In your classification what is "Ensemble" used for ?

alainbil posted:

nbpf posted:

 

I tag my classical music with "Composer", "Work", "Conductor", "Album", "Ensemble", "Artist", "Period" (meaning music era: contemporary, modern, romantic, classical, baroque, etc.), "Form" and "Genre". I tend to search my music via

In your classification what is "Ensemble" used for ?

It is used for the names of the ensembles that are associated to a given file.

Typically, a file (track) has just one "Ensemble" value like "Wiener Philharmoniker", "Orchestre de la Suisse Romande", "Scottish Chamber Orchestra" or "Takács Quartet".

But it is not uncommon to have tracks that involve two or more ensembles, for instance "Orchestra of the American Opera Society" and  "Chorus of the American Opera Society". This is often the case for opera albums.

I have found tha adding proper "Composer", "Work", "Conductor", "Ensemble" and "Form" tags to a ripped or downloaded album is a pain. But it pays off and, at least for me, a well classified collection is a source of pleasure.

I use ORCHESTRA for a large group, of instruments and CHOIR for a choir. I am thinking about using ENSEMBLE for small groups (trio and quatuor mainly)

alainbil posted:

I use ORCHESTRA for a large group, of instruments and CHOIR for a choir. I am thinking about using ENSEMBLE for small groups (trio and quatuor mainly)

In the beginning I had only one index called "Orchestra". I then realized that not all music is played by orchestras (I have started to get interested in music only a few years ago) and that choirs and orchestras (string quartets, trios, etc.) are specific instances of ensembles. I eventually decided to replace "Orchestra" with "Ensemble" without adding any new indexes. I have used this classification for meanwhile about two years and it has served me very well so far.

It goes without saying that the number and the kind of indexes one uses is a matter of personal preferences. The folks working in radio broadcasting need other indexes than music schools. And these need yet other indexes than music stores or internet streaming services.

I personally prefer to have orchestras, choirs, trios and quatuor all under the "Ensemble" index. This is perhaps also due to the fact that my music collection is rather small:  about 0.6TB. If you have a large music collection and if you want to search for specific orchestras in a set of files that only contains orchestral works, then introducing an "Orchestra" field makes perfectly sense.

But, at this pont, I would prefer to introduce distinct "Choir", "Orchestra", "Trio" and "Quatuor" indexes rather than "Choir", "Orchestra" and "Ensemble" with the latter lumping together trios and quatuors: it seems to me (and I might be wrong, of course) that "Ensemble" is at a higher level of abstraction (less specific than) "Choir", "Orchestra", "Trio" and "Quatuor".

Another point that is perhaps worth considering is that certain denotations are obviously overloaded. Thus, for instance, "string quartet" can denote both a "Form" of music (like "serenade" or "piano concert") than an "Ensemble". I tend to access orchestral works by selecting, for instance, "symphony" or perhaps "ouverture" in "Form" rather than  by picking up a specific orchestra under "Orchestra" or "Ensemble". Thus, as mentioned in a previous post, I tend to browse my collection via

Form > Composer > Album

rather than

Ensemble > Composer > Album

and, in fact, I think that I mostly browse it via

Composer > Work > Album.

One approach that you could follow in tagging your collection is to first sort out those indexes that you expect to use more. In my case, I have first made sure that "Composer" and "Work" were sorted out in my whole collection and then started to populate and cleanup the other indexes. Again, this is a matter of personal taste, discipline and, finally, time.

Physically, i.e. on my NAS-drive, the classical music is mainly organised by the composer. Each composer folder has a sub-folder for each ripped album/CD/downloaded album including release date, for example:

• F:\\Verdi, Giuseppe\\Requiem, Hickox - 1996

If an album consists of multiple CDs, I add the disc number, for example:

• F:\\Verdi, Giuseppe\Requiem - Solti, Disc 1 - 1990

Releases (CDs) with multiple classical composers end up as sub-folders in a parent-folder called classical compilations, for example:

• F:\\Classical Compilations\Brahms, Korngold; Violin Concertos - 2009

I have MinimServer deployed, and usually use it's metadata capabilities for finding or browsing a specific piece of music. To do that I am (obviously) using metadata fields (of which some are bespoke metadata fields) for each track, for example:

• Album Artist, e.g. London Symphony Orchestra & Hickox
• Album, e.g. Requiem, Hickox - 1996
• Track Artists, e.g. London Symphony Orchestra\\London Symphony Chorus
• Track, e.g. a. Dies irae, dies illa. Allegro agitato
• Conductor, e.g. Richard Hickox
• Composition (Work), e.g. Messa da Requiem
• Group, e.g. II. Dies irae (Sequentia)
• Movement Number, e.g. 2
• Composer, e.g. Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
• Year (of recording), e.g. 1995
• Label, e.g. Chandos
• Catalogue Number, e.g. CHAN9490
• Genre, e.g. Classical\\Requiem
• Style, e.g. Romantic
• Instrumentation, e.g. Voices\\Chorus\\Orchestra
• Display Composer, e.g. G. Verdi

The Display Composer field is used to include the composer in the track title when viewed in the Naim App. It is only added for classical music. The Group field is used by MinimServer to group multiple tracks in one group when browsing a composition. \\ is used by MinimServer to separate multiple values in the same field, thus if I was browsing by All Artists in the Naim App, I could get to the above track both via London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus (or through one of the two genres or three "instruments")

Where applicable, I would also include soloists in the Track Artists' field, for example:  Robert Lloyd (bass)\\London Symphony Orchestra

I must admit it takes a bit of effort to ensure that all metadata are correct, but, well, each to their own.

/Peter