In key initial “launching-pad” screens, the roon GUI is still prioritisng the “performance” or “production” contribution of classical composers rather than their “compositions”. This often leads to very bizare, confusing results with even the simplest searches of classical composers. A recent thread for example highlighted that Bach is credited with liner-note production
This may be a metadata QA issue but with living composers the effect is systemic as living composers may well have contributed to liner notes or sat in on recording sessions that premiere their work. The end result is that finding a simple list of albums where the composers main contribution was “composition” can be very difficult to find without an arduous re-tag of album credits. There is a composition screen at a “work” level of granularity but this is not the same thing. There also needs to be a more easily found/created album screen at a “composer” level of granularity.
Long term, this sort of interface workflow handling for classical music needs a re-think. But as a quick fix it would be nice simply to have the option of switching off performance/production screens for classical or at least ensuring that the default is that composition screens always come up first. It just doesn’t make any sense to me to have a confusing grouping of albums by main, appearance and production just because a composer also wrote his own liner notes or approved the mastering.
Also, a simple list of albums where the composers main contribution is composition should be much easier to find as for many of us this would be a starting point on a search. My suggestion would be that this album list should be what you see when you click on “Top Result” on a composer search rather than hidden at the bottom of a lot of confusing clutter in “Albums View All” which is the case at present.
But it has defaulted to “performer” so there is only one album displayed. At this stage I do not want to view at the work level but would have preferred an expansive list of albums where Arvo Parts main contribution was composition like this:
This screen I actually get from clicking “Albums View All” from the first screen but this can often be hidden from view in a sea of results that come up in a more complicated example. If it is going to be difficult to improve the workflow logic of the way classical search works then in the short term a perfectly acceptable fix would be just to have the option of hiding performer/production screens which for classical is often adding very little but taking away a lot. It would be nice to have an uncluttered option where I can navigate a simple hierarchy grouping by album, work and part where the main contribution of the composer is “composition”.
PS: As you can see from these screen shots I am getting large numbers of results with no album art. It is almost two weeks and I am still analysing audio after a 1.3 upgrade so I don’t know if it has something to do with that. I have either embedded or “folder” jpg’s for everything so I wasn’t expecting this. I will raise a separate support ticket.
Classical tagging and metadata, and the way they’re handled by a given application, can always be better, so we’re in agreement there.
I may be misunderstanding you, but I don’t think an album-level composer tag works very well for just about any major genre, including classical. Referring to my “Recently added” pile easily yields an example:
Finally, as a practical matter, if you’re looking for works by a particular composer in Roon, how about selecting “Composers” in the sidebar and then entering the name of the composer you’re seeking in the “filter” field? I guess that ideally this could entail fewer clicks/touches, but it seems to work quite well.
I think we are maybe talking about different things?
Roon has lots of options for drilling down and searching by a specific composer or work and all sorts of credit tags. And that is fine. That’s the strength of digital over physical.
But a lot of the time I would also just like to see a screen of albums where the work or composer might just be a part, maybe a small part, of a broader compilation on an album. In fact most of the time I personally would prefer that. It is not a very precise search like an artist or a work search or even a genre search. It is something else that is closer to the experience I remember browsing in a record shop that allows a more ‘free-form’ exploration of your library by the unexpected linkages that performers, producers and record labels etc. decided to draw between composers, works and artists. So not only is that option closer to a physical store experience but it is also closer to a “recital” or “mood” experience.
For me it is an added dimension that somehow got lost as physical record stores dissapeared and we digitised our collections. The advantages of more granular digital search are obvious but I can’t see why we have to throw the baby out with the bath water! I might be wrong but I would like such an option and I think others would as well.
Yes, I think it’s entirely likely that we just approach our respective libraries in different ways.
I do remember, though, that back in the days of record stores and when my library consisted of physical media, I always had trouble finding what I was looking for, and now I generally don’t. I used to enjoy browsing in record stores, but when I was looking for something specific but obscure back then, I tended to experience a level of frustration I’m not sure I can quite reach today, whether it’s searching my Roon library, for CD’s at Amazon, or for high-res downloads at the various purveyors.
I might lose some enthusiasm for Tidal at some point, but for now, I experience that same sense of serendipity when I find a new artist that I like on Tidal as I did when I used to hit my local record store on a weekly basis. It’s even better now, since I can always listen to stuff that looks interesting on Tidal, but I could only sometimes do that at my favorite record store. And there was really nothing analogous to Roon’s (or others’) “Discover” feature back in analog days.
I sort of understand your desire for “fuzzy” searching, but I have to say that paradigm, as I understand it from your description, doesn’t work for me. In my case, it’s more about following links in Roon, or checking out, on Tidal, recommendations from here or other likely places, just browsing Tidal and other websites, or following some kind of thematic line of inquiry that originates mostly in my head, often based on a particular piece of music I hear.
Yes. I could never find anything either. That’s why I went digital in the first place! And yes I can see that things like ‘discover’ are a digital version of the shop experience. Personally I just don’t find the precision of an ‘algorithmic’ directed choice or a highly ‘expert’ directed approach the same as an ‘artist’ directed choice.
For me, at the end of the day a “fuzzy” album view more reflects the choices and tastes of the artists themselves and results somehow in a very different experience from an algorithmic or expert driven approach. I like all the results. It just seems to me that, one approach, the artist driven approach has been driven down the priority list and I miss it.
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