Understanding Valence and Classical Music

Yes, we have.

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I’m currently re listening to the TTC audio course of this, what’s in the book? Do you know if it’s similar material to the audio course?

From the comments on Amazon, it’s more detailed. I haven’t heard the audio course.

Fair, can highly recommend as it includes music (both performances and him on the piano) and some great anecdotes.

I am really looking forward to Valence and indeed to anything that can improve the search and listening experience for classical music.

While Roon is certainly a great product in many significant ways, I have always found that neither Roon, Tidal or Qobuz have quite understood the fundamentals of classical music very well by only offering pretty elusive approaches to (cataloguing) the music and the listening experience.

I understand that Roon, for ideological reasons, has systematically declined to develop playlists with sublists which would be an overnight HUGE improvement for any serious classical music listener.

Even Spotify (sigh!) has got this right with the ability to create sublists to your playlists, for instance: Classical Music -> Bach -> Keyboard Music -> Glenn Gould.

If you are not only looking to explore new recordings, but also enjoy being able to quickly find your top 5 recordings of the middle quartets by Beethoven, this is a must. With classical recordings, you need to be able to reach out to your passive knowledge about the catalogue, not only the recordings you remember at the top of your head.

Respectfully, Miles Davis and John Coltrane is one thing (I love this music too, and the example in the video was great), and a systematical approach to 1000 recordings of works by Bach is another in terms of complexity.

Or at least it was until this new launch next week. Looking forward to it!

This is the first release where we have really treated classical as its own thing.

Previously, we tried find a framework that fit all kinds of music, and we jammed everything into it. This caused classical to suffer quite a bit, and didn’t serve other genres so well either. We had some very “deep cut” classical features like allowing to sort by composer catalog numbers, but we were missing basics like letting you see your Beethoven albums. It was really in disarray.

In 1.8, we have shifted to treating classical music like its own use case and we’re respecting it directly. This manifests in dozens of small and large ways in the product. Once we gave ourselves permission to build classical-specific features for classical artists, composers, albums, genres, and compositions, it gave us the tools to overcome many of the old problems and also do some interesting new stuff.

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Thanks for this Brian, really looking forward to it.

Brian

This sounds genuinely exciting. I trust that you will have the PR team in overdrive, as this should have massive appeal to those classical music lovers who were uncertain about Roon.

Roll on the big day.

This is awesome, can’t wait to see it in action.

Same concern. If this is an issue, I’m hopeful it can be controlled to some extent in settings.

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There is not a heart big enough to tell you how much I thank you. I hope your pay and your holidays are doubled immediately.

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I note that the latest email about Roon 1.8 (“Classical Music Reimagined”) is much more nuanced in its wording about how Roon makes recommendations - no naive language about “no-name” recordings, and being careful to distinguish how Valence operates against your personal library vs. discovery through the streaming services.

I do want to say I very much appreciate the effort to distinguish and improve the Classical experience for serious Classical listeners, and I also very much appreciate the effort to help newer Classical listeners to discover the depths and pleasures of this genre. Being part of the software industry myself, I know the feeling of “no good deed goes unpunished” and I don’t want to add to that.

I realize that when it comes to deciding which of 100s of performances of popular works to recommend, some kind of criteria has to be applied, and unfortunately there is no equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes to aggregate critical opinion on the worthiness of various performances. Defaulting to the popularity of the artists is not a very good answer, but it’s an answer. And beyond that, I’m looking forward to using the new features in 1.8 and reporting back!

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As it’s Valence based so “probably” based on how popular the music is with Roon users.

And thus came the algorithmic discovery that Celine Dion is in fact opera, and that Bruce Springsteen redefined the oratorio.

I think that’s categorisation not popularity :sunglasses::sunglasses:

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I’d add that it’s sometimes a very bad one: Karajan was banned in my household growing up, and that’s something I’d rather not change, for example.

Go explain that to the authors of the enraged posts that will doubtless happen if Roon Radio segues from Pinnock’s version of Handel’s Water Music into My Heart Will Go On :stuck_out_tongue:

In the performing arts as well as in literature, conceited opportunists and egotists are certainly quite abundant. For better or for worse, that alone does tell us nothing about the esthetic quality of their artistic achievements.

I don’t own a single one of Karajan’s recordings, but wouldn’t have him banned either, just because of his opportunistic and egotistic stance during German fascism.

There are users who need no excuse for outrage…

Oh, I’m well-aware of the abundance of raging narcissists in the arts, but thank you for explaining it.

This awareness matter cleared up, I do personally tend to draw the line at “making a career out of entertaining people while they make others into lampshades”, but man - to each their own. It’s just, and this, in my case, applies to Karajan like it applies to Phil Spektor like it applies to Bertrand Cantat, I don’t want to give them or their estates money through a streaming service, nor, should there be a choice, would I want their oeuvre to be put forward. If others want to go looking for 'em, fine with me.