2023-02-18, 22:15
I've been experimenting with Kodi's smart playlist feature. So far, I'm not very impressed. Maybe I'm missing something here and I need to dig deeper. I'm hoping someone on this forum can push me in the right direction.
Here's one example of what I'd like to do...
Let's say I want a smart playlist of relaxing music.
Since this isn't a genre, it isn't possible to use the genre as a filter. You might find relaxing music that is 'Easy Listening', 'Electronic', 'Pop', 'Classical', etc., but all of these genres have albums/songs that are definitely not relaxing. Relaxing music could be meditative, ambient, etc. What you need is some sort of subgenre classification. The All Music Guide (https://www.allmusic.com/) uses the field STYLE to define subgenres. For example, in the genre of Easy Listening, there are many styles, such as Guitar, Orchestral, Organ, Piano, and Space Age Pop. In the genre Electronic there are many ambient styles, all of which might be relaxing. World Music (AMG uses the genre International) has many styles that are relaxing, like a lot of music from India, but this is not something you will find by filtering with the genre International. AMG also has a genre for New Age which has styles that could be relaxing like Ambient, Meditation, Relaxation, etc. My point is, music that I might include in a smart playlist for meditative music might come from several genres each of which has styles (or subgenres) that might be meditative or relaxing. JRiver Media Center, supports the STYLE tag and I can easily use it as a filter.
What can I do in Kodi to filter by these subgenres? I currently don't use a tagging program that automatically gets this style or subgenre, so I have to manual enter it when I edit the metadata tags using Mp3Tag. I've also tried using MusicBrainz Picard and found it to be infinitely more cumbersome than Mp3Tag (at least so far). MusicBrainz doesn't seem to have a way to use the style tag in a way that is recognized by Kodi. I could also consider the mood tag but this shouldn't be necessary given the style already defines what I want.
In addition to styles or subgenres, you might classify music as relaxing based upon the actual waveform of the music file. The BPM, amplitude or volume level, dymanic range could possibly be used to calculate a track that could be relaxing music. When you import a music track into JRiver it can analyze the waveform and calculate those parameters which can be included in a smart playlist filter. Does Kodi have anything similar? If so, can you make the assumption that a track that has a BPM below a set value, a specific dynamic range and a peak and/or average volume below a level can be relaxing?
Next, I might like my smart playlist to filter by Boolean operators OR and AND. For example, I would like the relaxing music smart playlist to not include genres Country OR Blues OR Holiday OR Spoken Word. In addition, I want it to filter within the remaining genres for styles. Specifically:
Genre is not Country OR Blues OR Holiday OR Spoken Work
AND
Style contains Relaxation OR Relaxing OR Ambient OR Meditative
OR
BPM is less than 75 bpm
AND
Average Volume Level is less than 16
There might be a combination of both OR and AND Boolean operators. So far, with Kodi I can see it can handle OR statements within a filter but the combined filters don't seem to allow a mix of AND and OR. You either have the smartlist filters match all of the rules or you have it match at least one of the rules. That's a global AND or a global OR. There's no way to define combinations from what I can see.
There are other filters available in JRiver Media Center that I won't go into yet because I want to just start with these.
Here's one example of what I'd like to do...
Let's say I want a smart playlist of relaxing music.
Since this isn't a genre, it isn't possible to use the genre as a filter. You might find relaxing music that is 'Easy Listening', 'Electronic', 'Pop', 'Classical', etc., but all of these genres have albums/songs that are definitely not relaxing. Relaxing music could be meditative, ambient, etc. What you need is some sort of subgenre classification. The All Music Guide (https://www.allmusic.com/) uses the field STYLE to define subgenres. For example, in the genre of Easy Listening, there are many styles, such as Guitar, Orchestral, Organ, Piano, and Space Age Pop. In the genre Electronic there are many ambient styles, all of which might be relaxing. World Music (AMG uses the genre International) has many styles that are relaxing, like a lot of music from India, but this is not something you will find by filtering with the genre International. AMG also has a genre for New Age which has styles that could be relaxing like Ambient, Meditation, Relaxation, etc. My point is, music that I might include in a smart playlist for meditative music might come from several genres each of which has styles (or subgenres) that might be meditative or relaxing. JRiver Media Center, supports the STYLE tag and I can easily use it as a filter.
What can I do in Kodi to filter by these subgenres? I currently don't use a tagging program that automatically gets this style or subgenre, so I have to manual enter it when I edit the metadata tags using Mp3Tag. I've also tried using MusicBrainz Picard and found it to be infinitely more cumbersome than Mp3Tag (at least so far). MusicBrainz doesn't seem to have a way to use the style tag in a way that is recognized by Kodi. I could also consider the mood tag but this shouldn't be necessary given the style already defines what I want.
In addition to styles or subgenres, you might classify music as relaxing based upon the actual waveform of the music file. The BPM, amplitude or volume level, dymanic range could possibly be used to calculate a track that could be relaxing music. When you import a music track into JRiver it can analyze the waveform and calculate those parameters which can be included in a smart playlist filter. Does Kodi have anything similar? If so, can you make the assumption that a track that has a BPM below a set value, a specific dynamic range and a peak and/or average volume below a level can be relaxing?
Next, I might like my smart playlist to filter by Boolean operators OR and AND. For example, I would like the relaxing music smart playlist to not include genres Country OR Blues OR Holiday OR Spoken Word. In addition, I want it to filter within the remaining genres for styles. Specifically:
Genre is not Country OR Blues OR Holiday OR Spoken Work
AND
Style contains Relaxation OR Relaxing OR Ambient OR Meditative
OR
BPM is less than 75 bpm
AND
Average Volume Level is less than 16
There might be a combination of both OR and AND Boolean operators. So far, with Kodi I can see it can handle OR statements within a filter but the combined filters don't seem to allow a mix of AND and OR. You either have the smartlist filters match all of the rules or you have it match at least one of the rules. That's a global AND or a global OR. There's no way to define combinations from what I can see.
There are other filters available in JRiver Media Center that I won't go into yet because I want to just start with these.
