Classical Navigation

Quote if you put 10 classical fans in a room you’ll get 11 opinions on how to do it…

I am a new recruit , from JRiver. The big difference is that JRiver allows custom views.

Is there an appetite out there to develop a consensus of how classical should be run in order t o guide the devs

I would be happy to do any leg work if needs be

Any thoughts…

Mike

I appreciate Roon offers loads of ways to get anywhere So I am not so much seeking advice.

My primary aim is minimal clicks , Zero typing

Here’s mine … from my previous system

I filter primarily Composer>Genre>Sub Genre>Album then Track

Or less often Artist>Album>Track

Or Box Set> Disc > Track

I rarely useComposition view directly as method 1 essentially does that

My first suggestion would be to add a Genre Bar to composerview such that all appropriate genres show , a bit like artist view. BUT on selecting a Genre you are presented with albums fitting the condition eg Beethoven>Piano not ALL piano as in Artist, so you filter down the Composer reducing the number of albums each time

I know Focus on the album view does this but it’s a bit messy for everyday use.

To meComposition is nearly useless. I own Bach 2000 so I literally get 1000+ Compositions to dig through. Similarly I have big composite sets fo Beethove & Mozart

Unless you are trying to fish out compare 2 Beethoven’s 5 it’s not too helpful.

I hope this is a start…

Mike

I agree that filtering the composer pages by “genre” or “form” could be interesting, in order to immediately list Symphonies, or Sonatas, for example (without having to type those words). But much else of your way of travelling through your collection is different from mine, and in particular I think the Composer pages (with their sortable and filterable work lists) and Composition pages (listing performances in chronological order, also filterable) are hugely powerful if you have a large classical collection. YMMV.

But click buttons for filtering lists of compositions by “genre” or “form” is a good idea. I’m not however sure whether Roon has the metadata to do that.

Genre certainly seems available. Failing that you could elect to use Genre from your own file tags instead. Not ideal but doable

Depends how well curated your genre tags are I suppose

How do you typically get to a version of say Beethoven’s 5 th to listen?

Mike

Search
“Beethoven 5”
it’s in the list of compositions in the search results

Then select one of 34 performances.

1 Like

Have you tried creating a bookmark with the focus. That gives you one click access to the focus.

I agree with this, too, but it brings up a pet peeve of mine, which is that when it comes to classical music, Roon’s notion of genre confounds a number of things, including genre (i.e., classical), form (e.g., symphony, concerto — some of which are also accessible via focus), and instrumentation (e.g., orchestral, chamber music — which could be parsed much more finely), while at least one other important quality — period — isn’t included in genre but is instead accessible only via focus. (While trying to formulate this, I also noticed that I couldn’t seem to add an “orchestral” genre tag to just a composition; I had to add it to the entire album, and then it showed up for the composition.)

This all suggests to me that classical classification :wink: is currently a bit of a mish-mash and could use some more thought and work.

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that’s why owners of a large classical collection are moving to streaming services?

Streaming may be an answer but I still have the best part of 2500 albums on file

Mike

@Rugby

Is a bookmark Dynamic , eg if I set up one for Beethoven Symphonies and then add more Symphonies to the library will the new ones show without re doing the bookmark

I suspect not

Mike

Not wishing to preach , but…

A configurable dynamic “view” would be great so that you customize say the album view

Mike

[quote=“Mike_O_Neill, post:10, topic:36388”]
Is a bookmark Dynamic[/quote]

they’re dynamic

That is good , I have yet to try them

Mike