[MrNice]

Hello there,

I tried to find the best practices to set up to have the best result with my classical music. I did found some information but mainly they are out of date now.
In the case I am wrong, please could you post a link and don't mind the bellow.

I'd be glad to get the answers specifically regarding the classical music, for the last v17, what I can use immediately and for v18, to prepare the files.
My questions:
- Naming of the files. Same as other music?
- Specific classical music tags list with description and few examples of values (delimiters if relevant).
- Few examples of values of "other music" tags if classical music tags are used.

To be accurate in my questions, an example of what I need to know:
Tag work, what could be the values? What separators?
A- Symphony No. 3, in E flat major, op.55, “Eroica”, Part I, Allegro con brio
B- Symphony No. 3, in E flat major, op.55, “Eroica”, Mvt 1, Allegro con brio
C- Symphony No. 3, in E flat major, op.55, “Eroica”, Allegro con brio
D- Symphony No. 3, in E flat major, op.55
E- Symphony No. 3, in E flat major
F- Symphony No. 3, “Eroica”
G- Symphony No. 3
...
What, in this case, will be the value in title tag?

In fact I need, all users need a chapter for classical in Music Files & Tagging

Thank you for your help

[DaveBlake]

Sadly my advise is scattered throughout the forum, if someone would like to gather it into a single post it will be welcomed.  Meanwhile questions are good, far easier than me trying to guess what people need to know (or think they already do).

File and folder naming for music files is totally irrelevent to the Kodi music library, name them in a way useful to you. Kodi uses the tags embedded within the music files, so tag fully and accurately.

To my knowledge there are no tags specfic to any music genre, but I guess some more useful in the context of classical music than others. Classical music is more likely to have multiple album artists e.g. composer, conductor, orchestra than pop music, and the work (as yet unsupported by Kodi, but could come in time) is more meaningful to users, although pop songs can have work identified too.

As for delimiters, I would encourage the use of a music file format that supportes multi-frame tags e.g. FLAC files (my preferred as lossless and not bespoke) or ID3 v2.4 when mp3. Then delimiters (used initially so that multiple values could be identified in single frame ID3 v2.3 tags) are far less significant.

Implementation of features in Kodi will look to the Musicbrainz tagging style guidelines for good ideas and common practice. You ask for examples, and yes an example of Classical music in the wiki would be lovely, but my time is best spent on my long development todo list. A short cut in my typing here I would say pretty much look at what the tagging tool Musicbrainz Picard currently delivers. 



The one addition to the standard settings is to also get it to set the ALBUMARTISTS tag needed to support albums with multiple album artist, sadly it does not do that by default. To achieve that modiy the script settings (in Picard), found under Options>Options>Advanced>Scripting, add
$setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%)

Look in particular at how composer, conductor and orchestra are handled, and while ALBUMARTIST is what gets displayed on screen (in lists and during playback) is it ALBUMARTISTS that allows Kodi to identify individual album artists and match them the the mbid values provided.

I would also encourage Classical music enthusiasts to upgrade to v18 because it handles artist NFO files and local art better than v17.

• Leia introduces the concept of an Artist Information Folder that releases users from the need to try and put all the music by an album artist under one unique folder in order to be able to use local art and NFO files.
  
• Leia also has ability to filter music by source which is a very useful way to separate the Classical msuic, with its composers, conductors and orchestras, from your more contemporary music by just putting it all in a separate folder and defining that as a source. Far easier than trying to doclever things with genre.
  

I reccommend using multiple music sources (they can all be separate folders on one drive) as a convenient way of splitting up any music collection.

But the detail of your question focusses on the work tag. Kodi does nothing with that tag yet, but looking to the future for Classical music I advise having work and Musicbarinz Work Id tags in your music files. This offers the possiblity of fetching work details from Musicbrainz via the ID, rather than any clever parsing of work name (which is what your were thinking). Parsing name may happen too, but ID lookup is bound to be more accurate.

Of course not all Musicbrainz entries are done to the style guide - so be on the lookup when using Picard for user errors. Missing release, sign up and give back to the community by entering them or correcting errors. We are all volunteers!!

Out of interest what would you like to be able to do with "work" in Kodi?
Until that time work is supported the nearest you can get is seraching album and song title for (part of) the work name.

[MrNice]

Thanks for your fast answer, I see you spend a lot of time on the project, thanks for your commitment but take care of you.

You ask me what I'd like to do and see, so I am surprised you don't have a list of requirement from the users. Don't you have?
I am a common user and want to do the same.
I remember 3-4 years ago, reading a thread for classical music with XBMC. Maybe you was in. They was thinking to add work, opus and maybe ensemble tag. They disliked the way MB add performer[role].
So you are working on it, do you have a bill of specifications? is it possible to know what you have done and what you will? It could be easier to read it instead boring you with our questions.

In your example, Elgar, Cello concerto, I see 11 tags that represent artists with 2 to 8 duplicated. I can't really get the purpose of it. Albumartist and Albumartists have nearly the same value.
Why Conductor tag but not Performer[Conductor]?
Why Performer[orchestra] but not adding Ensemble tag?
Why Artist and Artists with the same value?
In Performer[role], is role in a defined list or a free text. In the case of free text how do you manage to display one role and not another, if the user want it so?
The answer should be in your bill of specifications.
You wrote "ALBUMARTIST is what gets displayed" can you display only a selected role?
 

Kodi does nothing with that tag yet, but looking to the future for Classical music I advise having work and Musicbarinz Work Id tags in your music files. This offers the possiblity of fetching work details from Musicbrainz via the ID, rather than any clever parsing of work name (which is what your were thinking). Parsing name may happen too, but ID lookup is bound to be more accurate.

With this, is it possible to enter Beethoven (composer), then Symphony No. 3 (work) and get all the different releases of this work I have even if there is no data from MB? I have a lot of work not in MB. I know, I'll have to enter the values manually.
If the opus is in work tag, it should be parsed to search by composer, Opus/Kochel.

[DaveBlake]

You ask me what I'd like to do and see, so I am surprised you don't have a list of requirement from the users. Don't you have? I am a common user and want to do the same.

Like so much information it is scattered across the forum. I started with good professional intentions to gather and manage such a list, but doing that and actually making some improvements to Kodi became too much. It is the kind of tech author task that does not require dev skills, so I invite anyone with spare time, some tech insight and infinite patience and attention to detail to take it up. Of course only more people with dev skills volunteering their time and energy, and being interested in those features wil actually make new feature happen, but every little piece of organisation and support helps.
 

I remember 3-4 years ago, reading a thread for classical music with XBMC. Maybe you was in. They was thinking to add work, opus and maybe ensemble tag. They disliked the way MB add performer[role].

Yes I was there, the jumble of composers, orchestras, conductors and pop artists that scanning my full music collection produced is what got me into this.
 

So you are working on it, do you have a bill of specifications? is it possible to know what you have done and what you will?

Broadly what I am working on, and intend to work on are documented here https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=310778, but other things interupt too and get my attention along the way.

You will scan that thread for "classical music" and possibly feel disappointed, but please don't. The more I got involved, the more I realised that many Classical music needs could be served by less specific improvements that helped even more users. Best example of that is the new filter by source facility, but also adding processing of composer tag (back in v17) is not classical music specific by applies to any music.
 

The answer should be in your bill of specifications.

Yes, if Kodi had a documented design that would be true. I don't know if it true for all FOSS projects, but anyway Kodi does not have documented design except for in the more recent years a review history on GitHub of the code changes. How can we possibly produce anything in those conditions, well there are days when I wonder that, but somehow we do.

Anyway you ask questions that all relate to how does Kodi use the music file tags to make a library. That will take a lot of words to describe, and I just don't have the time now, sorry. Most is based on the ID3 v2.4 standard plus some common practice where use has exceeded the spec limits. The exception is ARTISTS and ALBUMARTISTS (added by Musicbrainz and becoming definative), but that use I have already explained in many places on the foum. Having nearly the same value is not the same has having exactly the same value.

Reading the Musicbrainz Classcial music style guide should also help you.

Conductor historically has a tag in the ID3 spec, (but if you put it in the performer tag then Kodi would cope)

Ensemble is not a standard tag, performer is, and provides a way to handle many different things

If there is only one individual ARTISTS and ARTIST would be the same (and the ARTISTS tag unnecessary, but takes precidence when present), likewise with ALBUMARTIST and ALBUMARTISTS. But once multiple artists are invovled then the "S" tag is used with standard delimiter (or separate name values in each frame) while the plain tag becomes just descriptive.

Role is free text. You can then filter on role, or display that artist performing role (up to the skin to use the info label)


 

With this, is it possible to enter Beethoven (composer), then Symphony No. 3 (work) and get all the different releases of this work I have even if there is no data from MB? I have a lot of work not in MB. I know, I'll have to enter the values manually.
If the opus is in work tag, it should be parsed to search by composer, Opus/Kochel. 

Ok now we get you answering my question of "what do you want to do?"  

Yes a future implementation of processing "work" in Kodi would allow for filtering albums by composer and text found in the work tag (no mbids invloved). Actually you can achieve similar results already if you have the work as part of the album title (that is quite common). It is the sideblade filter functionality that needs extending rather than a scanning more tags issue.

Parsed, no I don't think so. But Kodi is a flexible and powerful tool for those that want it to be. If Kod stores the work value and lets users filter using wild cards then it is really up to you how use use it.

[scott967]

I "bit the bullet" and adopted Musicbrainz style for classical.  The drawbacks I've seen are

1.  A certain amount of redundancy
2.  Long "song" titles which are difficult to display in skins
3.  Difficulty in providing a grouping / sorting by "work".

Some more minor difficulty in dealing with alias names.

I find "performer" tag better than eg ensemble, as it allows a more descriptive role.  But it would be nice if there were an ability to group roles in a hierarchy -- I have performers with role of soprano, soprano I, soprano II which I would like to be able to group together.  I also have a problem where a performer role is portraying a person (eg in opera).

scott s.
.

[redulike]

Has anyone had any sort of success with using cue sheet files for classical music? I have recently started trying out cue sheets but it appears , to me, that there is limited scope for defining tags other than title, artist and album.  I foresee problems if the 'tracks' have different composers, artists etc.

I had hoped that it would avoid the need for splitting a long work (or CD) into separate files, for example.  I'd still like a 'search' to display the individual tracks but give me the option to play the complete work.

Background : I shoud note that I haven't yet carried out a proper re-tagging of my files.  I'm aware of advice elsewhere on the Forum for tagging classical music.  In my current case individual files are tagged rather inconsistently, dating from pre-Kodi days, as I have been used to selecting music by it's file name which starts with the composer's name followed by abbreviated work details.  Albums are grouped in directories under the Composer's name in the traditional sort of Artist/Album directory arrangement.   I'm aiming at being able to do a Kodi search across both folder trees.

[DaveBlake]

By best advice is don't use cuesheets. They are an out moded approach to digital music from the days when seemless playback was not possible. There is very limited tag support (just the original cuesheet standard). While someone could come along and dream up bespoke additions and try to implement them in Kodi, there is so much other better work they could do I hope that isn't how they choose to sned their skills.

Rip CD as individual music files per track, tag them fully and consistently, and enjoy what Kodi can do now and will be able to do in the future. That includes seemless playback, but also great library support making browsing your collection an enjoyable experience.
 

I'm aiming at being able to do a Kodi search across both folder trees.

No idea what you mean, Kodi does not really care about what folders you use or how they are named. There are advantages to putting all the music files from an album under one folder, after that it is the tagging (of artists, composer, conductor etc. with eventually possible support for work too) that counts.

Just test it out with some of your music - split into separate files per tarck, tag with Picard, scan into Kodi - and see how it works.

[scott967]

I did complete changing all my tags to MB style.  In some cases I added releases to MB and I still don't have a good handle on the best way to do that (I get confused about setting up all the relations between performer, recording, work, and release).  Aside from not having the ability to group by "work" in Kodi, it would be nice to have ability to show all roles for an artist in artist info dialog.  Also, a flag and infobool for *.IsClassical which skins could use to modify displaying info (genre is too undefined to reliably use as a test).

scott s.
.

[mister_eff]

The one addition to the standard settings is to also get it to set the ALBUMARTISTS tag needed to support albums with multiple album artist, sadly it does not do that by default. To achieve that modiy the script settings (in Picard), found under Options>Options>Advanced>Scripting, add
$setmulti(albumartists,%_albumartists%)

Look in particular at how composer, conductor and orchestra are handled, and while ALBUMARTIST is what gets displayed on screen (in lists and during playback) is it ALBUMARTISTS that allows Kodi to identify individual album artists and match them the the mbid values provided.

This seems like a really important, fundamental detail to be so underemphasized