If there’s a simple way to to sort by albums by composer with a genre of music I’m all ears. Otherwise, and I’m sure it’s probably requested somewhere, this would be most helpful for Classical, perhaps Jazz too, and hey, why not other genres?
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Well… I have over a 100 composers in Classical and more with related genres (symphonic, chamber, etc). So I don’t see it as a very efficient means. But thanks for suggesting.
You could try clicking on the Composer view, which will give you all composers in alphabetical order, then focusing that by Genre. Then when you drill into a composer you get compositions rather than albums, which is probably better.
One thing about that strategy that annoys me however is that many jazz and soundtrack composers come up as classical.
Of course a more general solution would be to be able to sort any view by any tag …
On a composer by composer basis, you could use bookmarks to retrieve the searches easily, but I agree it’s not very useful for your case.
Once you start having multiple composers, I can see all sorts of problems as composers and albums don’t necessarily go together well. Certainly in the jazz world an album will have many different composers.
To whom would you ascribe such an album?
I think you’d be better to use the Compositions browser, and then focus and sort on performances.
Not for Classical. Think about a record store. You look for Miles Davis (artist) in the Jazz section or Mozart (composer) in the Classical section, and then an album of interest. Never do you start out looking for Allegro Vivace, 2nd movement of Concerto in F, KV 459, by Mozart.
Hmmm… I mostly listen to classical and I very often think along the lines of Composer Composition, eg Beethoven Piano Concerto 3. But I also sometimes think about Albums by composer, so you have a point. There should be many ways of navigating ones music. I have given up thinking about record stores. They were wonderful places if you knew a good one. You could walk up to the guy behind the counter and ask what recording of Schuberts Death and the Maiden he had, or what recent recordings by the Pavel Haas quartet … stuff was never in the right order in the bins. Think of all the Mendelssohn Violin Concertos there would be in the Beethoven section, because it was so commonly paired with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
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They are still aplenty I think, brick and mortar style. But think too in the ether world: Tidal, Qobuz, HD Tracks, etc. There you still browse mainly by album if say you search for Bach. But back to the point…
Here what comes up when I use the Composer view and click on odd ol’ J.S. For simplicity, notice the 3rd and 5th entry for Brandenburg 1 and 2. But the album has No. 3 as well. I can finally get there with more clicks but it gets even worse for some other “compositions”. Much simpler if they’d just add a composer sort to the album view.
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You don’t need to tell me how poor Roon is at navigating classical music … the search is poor, focus is inflexible and restrictive, the views are limited, it is very very frustrating. Coming from J River I couldn’t believe how weak Roon was in these respects when I first switched to it. But it is the only thing that gives me integration with Qobuz so I live with it, and live in hope that they will fix it. And I moan on here occasionally too.
I too came from JRiver (I still use it)
I found myself going
Artist>Sort by Album Title> Find Album,
instead of in JRiver
Composer>Genre>SubGenre>Album
Focus does work to an extent but their Sub Genre is weak eg Classical>Keyboard is the best yo can get and that mixes Piano with Organ , a Real pain with Bach
I still maintain my JRiver library , if Tidal;should flounder I will be set. It stops me going Life Member
PS Roon demands a lot of typing compared to JRiver simply tapping an iPad
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Unfortunately this doesn’t work well for classical. I have over a hundred compositions by Bach, but he does not appear in the artist browser.
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Try
Albums> Focus> Go far right Composer> Select Bach
Then sort by AlbumTitle , I get 353 albums including Jethro Tull where they play a classical track
You can refine it and select say Genre
On the Genre pie chart, the words at the right tap Classical , you see Genres, expand the down arrow and select say keyboard, mine drops to 171
It’s a bit coarse as keyboard includes organ
Try the Filter funnel, type organ it refined further
Maybe just play around with the options
When you are done you can save a Bookmark that dynamically changes as you add other albums
Clear as Mud ?
Thanks Mike, that works the best so far. It also brings up another wish, that they’d sort composer by last name, not by how many titles it finds. I know there’s the ‘filter’, but as someone pointed out, more typing. A lot of shortcomings but your search method is basically good.
It also leads to this unusual result. When I focus on John Lennon/Paul McCartney it brings up only the Escher Demos. I have every album and multiple versions of some. If I add Lennon and McCartney separately then I get all their solo albums too (and other artists’ versions of course).
You can sort Composer alphabetically or by no of compositions on the Composer screen top right corner
In Settings you can choose Last Name, First Name or First Name , Last name
On import Roon recognizes Mozart but not Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (xxxx-yyyy) which is a format automated bu MusiCHI Tagger
I was referring to the list when you select Focus >> Composers. It is sorted by number of albums by a composer. There is no way to change it.
I am not aware of any setting to change that , at least it puts our favourites first
Roon has a lot of good points but many weaknesses, I still have the “Love hate Relationship”
What I have started doing is to create Tags for static content eg the Beethoven Edition, and Bookmarks for stuff that changes with new albums eg Bach Keyboard Albums. That’s the way Tags and Bookmarks work anyway
Four years later and there’s still no way to alphabetize Focus >> Composers? Or, am I missing something?
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No but its in order of number of compositions
3 - 4 letters in the filter gets must things done , that’s new since this OLD thread