What is optimal classical metadata structure for Roon?

[Ludwig (Ludwig van Marbach)]

@Simon_Chick

All I’m really after is the best consistent way to organise my Classical tags to make it as easy as possible for Roon to do what it is supposed to do, and for Roon do it reliably and consistently.

One answer to that aim is to use the Album Artist and Album fields from the Allmusic.com website. That means Roon will have an easier time matching the albums.

If albums are unidentified, or only have secondary metadata, I recommend you tag your files consistently with Allmusic. I.e. with the same spelling of composers and artists, and (crucially) the precise same work names. This means that artists, composers and works from your unidentified albums will be integrated into those from your identified albums.

[Simon_Chick]

Well, that is a clear answer to my question, but as it doesn’t sound automatable it is not something I will be attempting. There are just too many files.

Which, I suppose, is why I want Roon to take more notice of the tagging which the user has done.

I appreciate that this is getting a bit circular though!

[Georgethesixth]

1. Please add “solo instrument” to the list
2. Be aware of the Strauss curse :). Johann Strauss I (the Elder), Johan Strauss II (the Younger), Johann Strauss III (Nephew) There are a more composers who share the same last and surname.

As a previous responder stat d : talk to the http://www.musichi.eu guys. They have IMHO the best metadata sources I found in classical music. Tagging classical music has been their bread and butter since their existence.

[jlo]

Are you saying Romantic is a genre for the purposes of computer science practice? I guess I can buy that if that’s the only way to make it work. But if you want the database solution to mirror how people think of “Romantic” and apply it, Romantic music is denoted by a period which begins in the late 1700s and ends before WWI. – essentially the 19th century. http://www.ipl.org/div/mushist/rom/

[jlo]

If it’s possible to split out the categories into more fields: performers and instruments, instrumentation, style, etc., that would be great. Sounds like a massively big undertaking. If I could just find music based on composer, performer, period and genre, that would address 95% of how I use a database.

[Geoff_Coupe]

@jlo

If I could just find music based on composer, performer, period and genre, that would address 95% of how I use a database.

Unless there are time-travelling composers, aren’t composers anchored in their period? That being the case, then Focus already allows you to find music based on composer, performer, and genre…

However, you can also use Focus on Works, where you can select composers and period together if you wish…

[jlo]

I’m not sure what you mean by composers anchored in their period. If there is no category of Period, then yes, when you find Beethoven you’d find a “Classical” composer. But what if you wanted to look up something by Period and Genre?

The Focus function seems like a great start. It’s really clunky to use as it is, but I’m sure that’s not an issue of just putting it in the basic menu.

Can I ask a question here? Is it Roon’s intention to automate everything so the user doesn’t have to do anything? If that’s the case, I think you’re headed for a world of heartache with classical music. Based on what a mess my classical collection is in, automation just gets in the way. Yes, when the automation gets it right it’s a wonderful thing. But iTunes and other providers are so error prone it’s painful. When I click on the period “Classical” in Roon this is what I get. 4 of 5 are wrong.

To fix this requires going through album by album one at a time without much click conservation. I have visions of carpal tunnel. So, while it’s great to add fields and resolve Album Artist and such, perhaps as big is to let us classical users fix tracks easily – don’t assume that because the data pathways and fields have been corrected everything’s solved. The above image, unfortunately, represents my experience on Roon with classical music. I suggested this once and will here again, why not give us a brain-dead easy spreadsheet function that Oracle would be envious of to fix tracks?

[Richard_Wolff]

Perhaps a first step in dealing with the classical music “problem” is for the Roon developers to create a tagging scheme that is what they need in order to do the kind of job they want to do. This would result in the list of the tags that Roon will support, together with an explanation of what those tags mean in the context of search and display. For instance, it has been mentioned that composer is treated differently for works tagged with “classical”. That would allow each user to understand how his/her tagging structure will work within Roon; in fact, it would be nice to have that now.

Secondly, I suggest that Roon support an input mapping system that would allow the user to map an existing tagging to what Roon needs. Such a mapping would be could be different for each album, and while it is more likely to have different mappings only for large groups of albums, mappings could even be used on a track by track basis. The mappings are used only when an album is scanned and are kept in the database for any re-scanning. There would be read-only mappings provided by Roon and presumably covering common cases. The user could create/copy/modify/delete mappings as needed. Such mappings can deal with common problems, such as comma separation of names where semicolon is preferred, Cyrillic character names and variant spellings, and so forth. If in the future it becomes clear that some part of the underlying Roon structure needs changing, it is likely that a mapping applied to the maps might be all that’s needed.

I think mappings should be relatively easy to implement, but then 40 years of Unix text handling will do that to you. In fact, I’d go for inclusion of some kind of regular expressions as the most flexible way to do mappings, but this may not be worth the support cost.

[Georgethesixth]

Someone mentioning the concept of 'cost’in development or maintenance. Are you trying to spoil it for the rest of us bro ?

[evand]

@Richard_Wolff

Perhaps a first step in dealing with the classical music “problem” is for the Roon developers to create a tagging scheme that is what they need in order to do the kind of job they want to do. This would result in the list of the tags that Roon will support, together with an explanation of what those tags mean in the context of search and display. For instance, it has been mentioned that composer is treated differently for works tagged with “classical”. That would allow each user to understand how his/her tagging structure will work within Roon; in fact, it would be nice to have that now

Agreed, albeit I’d add that Roon should share their thinking iro dealing with classical music in one’s library and solicit feedback from classical music listeners to ensure their thinking and user expectations are as aligned as practicable. With that out of the way the key issue then becomes having Roon correctly identify an album, after which most things presumably fall into place.

[Simon_Chick]

@evand

Perhaps a first step in dealing with the classical music “problem” is for the Roon developers to create a tagging scheme that is what they need in order to do the kind of job they want to do. This would result in the list of the tags that Roon will support, together with an explanation of what those tags mean in the context of search and display. For instance, it has been mentioned that composer is treated differently for works tagged with “classical”. That would allow each user to understand how his/her tagging structure will work within Roon; in fact, it would be nice to have that now

Agreed, albeit I’d add that Roon should share their thinking iro dealing with classical music in one’s library and solicit feedback from classical music listeners to ensure their thinking and user expectations are as aligned as practicable. With that out of the way the key issue then becomes having Roon correctly identify an album, after which most things presumably fall into place.

Exactly. Tell us how to give Roon what it needs to do what it does best.

[Simon_Chick]

@Ludwig

Roon does not currently read an Orchestra tag. I would suggest you duplicate that tag with the “Performer” tag which Roon does read. This duplication could be automatically done with a good tag editor (I recommend Metadatics on Mac) in five minutes for a whole collection, assuming not done over the network. Duplicate rather than move over, because maybe later Roon will see the Orchestra tag and call that data “Orchestra” on-screen rather than “Performer”.

I can’t find a Performer tag in JRiver, which has been my most recent tagging tool. MediaMonkey (a blast from my past) and Tag&Rename don’t even recognise Orchestra.

Is Performer a reasonably standard tag or is it a Custom tag?

[Ludwig (Ludwig van Marbach)]

@Simon_Chick

Is Performer a reasonably standard tag or is it a Custom tag?

Standard tag; ID3v2, Vorbis, APEv2

https://picard.musicbrainz.org/docs/mappings/

[Rainer_Muller (Rainer)]

I’m using the MusiChi Scheme for tagging classical music for three or four years now with very good experiences (It was mentioned already by Bruce in a posting above).

Philippe Watel, the developer of MusiChi, has explained his thoughts on tagging classical music in his blog “The Zen of Classical Music Tagging”. It’s the most deeply founded reasoning on the subject I’ve read so far – and it works.

Here’s the Part 2 on the use of tags:The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 2)

Part 1 on the structure of classical compositions: The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part1)

Part 3 on the namings of albums and compositions: The Zen of Classical Music Tagging (Part 3)

There are also Parts 4 & 5 on more specialized topic.

It doesn’t solve the problem how Roon displays the various fields, but I think it makes clear the structure of information needed to identify classical music.

[Simon_Chick]

The Performer field seems to be called Instrument in JRiver, which is referenced in the link for ID4(?) tags, but which does not seem like a comfortable place to out an orchestra name. And oddly the Orchestra field was not mentioned in that mapping as far as I could see. Confusing.

[Esskay]

I agree with Rainer that MusiChi represents a thoroughly analyzed system for tagging classical music. Also, the MusiChi tagger program allows the user to move data in bulk from one tag to another- just the thing for someone who wants to move data from the artist tag into the composer tag. I use MusiChi to clean my tags before (and sometimes after) indentification by Roon. But I don’t believe that this should be necessary.

Roon could help us minimize the need to “clean” the tags by implementing several changes:

1. Roon’s default behavior should be to ignore all tags in listing identified albums. Roon claims to have access to especially rich sources of metadata. So if an album is identified, we should be able to assume that little, if any, additional information is contained in the tags. This would avoid problems with composers in the artist field listed as performers. It would also avoid problems with multiple performers or composers when there are differences in spelling the names.
2. To help with unidentified albums, Roon should assume some easy rules about equivalent names. Roon should know that “FirstName LastName” = “LastName, FirstName”. It could also know some easy facts about composer names: “Franz Joseph Haydn” = “Joseph Haydn” or “WA Mozart” = “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart”, etc.
3. Because some albums are unidentified and others are inconsistent, we need a way to fix data within Roon. All data editing should be available at album, composition and track levels. It is a major pain to determine what name Roon, Rovi and Allmusic use for a given composition, and sometimes for a composer or performer. How about being able to select from a list? Jim already mentioned ArkivMusic’s pull-down menus as an easy structure for finding music. A similar structure with Rovi’s existing composers/performers/compositions could allow selection of a composer, performer or composition consistent with most entries already known to Roon. Ideally, we could add local entries to that list to accommodate elements unknown to Roon.

-SK

[Simon_Chick]

Well I think we pretty much did it to death now, but notably without any clear conclusions.

My feeling remains that we desperately need Roon to give a lead on how the library would like to have the tags presented to it, and also make sure that the library actually uses the tags when told that they are being presented in an approved scheme.

Back to you, @joel

[Rainer_Muller (Rainer)]

The discussion was not entirely inconclusive, I think. Let me try to summarize what I have learned.

1. The problem is not so much with the albums Roon is able to identify finally. We just need some hints how we can help Roon to identify the albums with our tags. Afterwards, Roon should best forget about the tags in the files if there is enough metadata from Rovi.

2. The difficulty is with the albums Roon is not able to identify. At the moment, they are somehow detached from the rest of the library. They are not part of the “Roon experience”. Roon should allow to help us here.
   a) We should be able to map composers, for example to identify JS Bach with Johann Sebastian Bach within Roon. Better still, Roon should do it for us (see the the contribution of Esskay above).
   b) Similarly, we should be able to map performers (conductors, soloists, orchestras) onto their Roon equivalents. No matter how this information is displayed in the end.
   c) Finally (and I consider this quite important) we should be able to tell Roon about the compositions (works). For example, I would like to tell Roon that “Messe in h-moll, BWV 232” is the same as “Mass in B minor, BWV 232”. Roon already has a list of compositions for each composer. Give me a drop-down list or something similar.

These are the things that could be implemented in Roon on the software side, independent of any metadata sources. I would quite happy if Roon could learn the above points.

One final wish: In concertos, give the soloist a prominent place in the display (e.g. Alfred Brendel, piano). At the moment it is hidden in the credits somewhere near the producer.

[JOHN_COULSON]

Just tuned into this discussion so my 2c worth after many, many hundreds of hours of grooming Sooloos over the last 6 years to do what I want - and my tag system will be lost in migrating to Roon later this month (it is 2017 here already - happy new year everyone!).

No argument with me that composers should NOT go in the artist slot but I disagree that full name of composers should be used. Note that in discussions we rarely refer to the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, we talk about the BEETHOVEN symphonies. And I agree with the sentiment about solo artists in concertos etc should have first billing with first and last name. But after that it does get complicated and, IMHO, there is never going to be universal acceptance by classical music lovers about the “best” way of presenting their classical albums.

My personal preference is to use “tags” as a key, something which caused irritation with some elsewhere but, at the risk of repeating myself, I will elaborate. I found the “genre” structure of Sooloos cumbersome so avoided it and feel it is a slippery slope to follow as a means of classification, particularly in mixed classical albums. [And here the suggestion that individual tracks be tagged has merit].

The system I evolved with Sooloos has a variety of many, many different types of tags with some albums having up to 4 tags added. Examples:

ARTIST: Steven Fox
ALBUM: Steinberg: Passion Week
Tags: A A Classical background [useful for random track backround music]; Choral [self explanatory]; Z - classical Miscellaneous [a tag for ALL classical albums]

ARTIST: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
ALBUM: C.P.E. Bach: Oden; Psalmen; Lieder
Tags: Choral; Composer - Bach C.P.E. ; Z- Classical Miscellaneous

ARTIST: Matthew Halls
ALBUM: Parnassi in Paris
Tags: Baroque and early; Composer - Handel; Opera; Z-Classical Miscellaneous

ARTIST: Tokyo Baroque Trio
ALBUM: Teleman: Paris Quatour No,2 in A minor
Tags: A A Classical background; Baroque & Early; Chamber; Composer - Telemann; Z - Classical Miscellaneous

ARTIST: The Kings Singers
ALBUM: Various: Christmas Presence
Tags: Choral; Xmas; Z-Classical Miscellaneous

And of course the Kings Singers album above was completely misidentified so all tracks had to be edited, a common burden with classical music.

I use another tag “Mood” which crosses over classical, jazz and popular fare and is useful to select for random play when nice quiet relaxing background is required with company. And so it goes on.

The above suits me very well for this very large library (over 11,000 of the 15,000 odd are classical). e.g. I can focus on the tag “Chamber” set to random play so when I hear an appealing unknown piece of music I can listen to the whole album.

Now the above might not suit others and there is no way I could expect Roon to do it all for me automatically. So, to me, it boils down to Roon 1.3 having a good editing structure that allows classical music users to groom albums to their own requirements.

John

[austinpop]

Hello, I realize I’m resurrecting a dormant thread, but with the release of 1.3 a couple days ago, can we get an update from the Roon folk on progress on this classical metadat front?

I am in the kicking tires phase of Roon, having received a 60-day trial, and this is a make or break issue for me. I have my own peculiar tagging scheme, and am facing a daunting re-tagging effort. I only want to do this once - if at all!