I recently tried to find contemporary composers within the Classical genre but discovered that this category does not exist. Instead, these artists seem grouped under “Avant-Garde”—a confusing mix that includes jazz and world music figures like Joe Lovano, Anouar Brahem, Anthony Braxton, Colin Walcott, John Medeski, and Mino Cinelu. Even Mike Oldfield is misplaced here, as he is not a classical composer.
I highly recommend updating the software’s genre architecture in future updates. Specifically, the software should use the standard industry term “Contemporary” to categorize 20th and 21st-century art music (from post-Ravel, Stravinsky, and Mahler up to the present day). Classical music aficionados know exactly who belongs in this space—such as Boulez, Cage, Kurtág, Henze, Glass, Maderna, and Berio—and who does not. Even cross-genre figures like Frank Zappa, despite composing contemporary works, feel out of place in the current setup. Additionally, looking at past forum discussions, there is a clear demand for a dedicated “Baroque” subgenre, which is currently missing. Thank you for your time and consideration. Cheers from Buenos Aires.
I’ve moved your post to the Feedback category where it will be read by the Roon Labs team. They do not generally monitor the Roon Software Discussion category of the forum.
Thank you, that is useful for Roon Labs team. But nobody of fellow Roon subscribers classical music aficionados will read it, the post completely disappeared from “latest” and “new” posts also. Can it be placed in both categories? or wait just a few days for moving it to “Feedback”?
Posts in some categories in the forum are not automatically included in the “Latest” list, e.g. those in Feedback and Tinkering. This is by design of Roon Labs.
You can always place a link to this thread (rather than a duplicate post) in the Roon Software Discussion category if you wish to bring it to wider attention by the community.
For info, Roon Labs have adopted the genre and sub-genre hierarchy used by AllMusic…
And you could add Baroque yourself to the genre hierarchy used within your Roon Library. Note that Roon uses “Baroque” as a Period criterion in the Composition Browser:
I don’t think roon is going to change Allmusic genres. Apart from anything, at this stage of roon’s development it is probably a very deeply baked in feature. Shouldn’t this be moved to a change request to see if there are any votes or interest?
In the mean-time you might have more luck leveraging roon’s existing allmusic genre categorizations. For example, using “avant-garde music” for classical and reserving “avant-garde” for non-classical, jazz etc. There are other distinctions that are useful. For example “modern composition” for classical but “modern creative” for jazz. Film music genres like film score vs. film music is another one.This does require you to edit/customise your library but I don’t see a way round it. You can try use genre-mappings to reduce the editing load.
Roon does not categorise “Baroque” or “Romantic” as genres but instead as “periods”. You can filter on Baroque in the composition editor but not the album editor because that is logical from a data organization perspective. Personally I have just added medieval, renaissance, baroque romantic and other periods as custom genres so I can filter and focus on them in the album view from a usability rather than strictly data perspective.
Feedback is a huge desert .. Actually I discovered with my post on contemporary music that this feedback category existed.. I cannot understand thar Roon staff overlook some categories and only concentrate on feedback. I also discovered that feedback posts are not included in the most viewed buttons, “last” and “new”.. Weird ostracism for my post which has an important musical point. Cheers.
Hugs, Diego
.. Actually I discovered with my post on contemporary music that this feedback category existed.. I cannot understand thar Roon staff overlook some categories and only concentrate on feedback. I also discovered that feedback posts are not included in the most viewed buttons, “last” and “new”.. Weird ostracism for my post which has an important musical point. Cheers.