On Baroque and Being Nuts

[pphaneuf]

If, like me, you're kind of a nutcase when it comes to your music's meta-data, then, for goodness sake, steer clear of baroque and classical music!

I've been in the process of ripping Bach's Matthäus-Passion (BWV 244), on and off, for most of the day, typing such things as "Petrus aber saß draußen im Palast" and "Aria with Chorus (Soprano, Alto)", wondering about such thing as whether "Ripieno-Sopran" was missing a trailing "o" or not (it's German, it takes it in Italian and English)...

I also suspect some jazz could pose similar problems. Some electronic music also has plenty of complications, some tracks being remixes of other artist's work (I broke down and individually attributed each tracks of Aphex Twin's "26 Mixes for Cash", turning it into a compilation, which still seems odd to me), or in the easier cases, a track having multiple mixes.

Comments

i prefer to call myself a music geek then a nutcase tho it's probably debatable ;)

[tygrbabe.livejournal.com]

26 mixes for cash seems to have each individual artist named and then pops up when i search for Aphex on iTunes so i think that works well :)

as for remixes, usually you'll have the name ov the artist doing the remix in brackets after the name ov the song and the original artist under "artist". for example i have under a Björk search: Army of me (Beastie Boys remix) - Björk - Army of me single - Hip Hop

i've also seen the name ov the song + remix name in brakets and under artist the name ov the person remixing it... and now i must go make brunches so i can't give you an example :s

*runs off*

Re: i prefer to call myself a music geek then a nutcase tho it's probably debatable ;)

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

By your first paragraph, I assume you're referring to what iTunes gives when you insert the CD, right? I found that information to sometimes be wildly inadequate for my "nutcase standards", either with inconsistent naming (at its worst in multi-disc albums, where one is called "Foo (disc 1)" and the other "Foo (Disc Two)", when it feels especially stupid!) or downright incorrect (I've had a track whose name was completely different than what it said on the album!). They have things like capitalizing that's different from the album (I follow that of the album where there's one, other I capitalize things correctly) or missing accents (it's bloody Björk, not Bjork, damnit!). :-)

I use the remix artist in parenthesis after the name of the song, with the original artist under "artist" as well. Which is why "26 Mixes For Cash" seems odd to me, because, well, it's an Aphex Twin double album with only two tracks with him name on them! But well, that's what it is!

But the point is, I'm not relying on what iTunes gives me, because the Gracenote database they use is too inconsistent. It's my preeeciousss music library, and I want it all nice and consistent to my near-insane standards! So I picked one style for remixes, and format everything accordingly. Which makes it quite annoying when I decide my style wasn't so good after all, because I then go over my whole damned library to fix everything up. Yow!

But the bloody baroque/classical music, they're going to give me ulcers, I tell you!

Two pop quiz questions: without looking it up, is it the "Smashing Pumpkins" or "The Smashing Pumpkins"? Is it the "Arcade Fire" or "The Arcade Fire"? Since Gracenote uses both forms, and iTunes distinguishes between the two, this is "important".

Yeah, so, as I was saying, nutcase. :-)

ok maybe i am a little nuts...

[tygrbabe.livejournal.com]

crap i got both wrong :P i was gonna say The Arcade Fire and Smashing Pumpkins but according to their respective web sites it's Arcade Fire and The Smashing Pumpkins...

see, i would go over everything but i currently have 28 819 songs in iTunes so i tend to just correct things as i see them :) what drives me nuts tho is the genre; people just don't care what they write in there, it's sooooo annoying!! like for instance, AFX in my library is currently tagged as Braindance which is cute, yes, but not accurate!

so yeah, 28000 songs, i've got my work cut out for me O_o

Re: ok maybe i am a little nuts...

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Hehe! See, it's, uh, a lot of fun being nuts! :-P

The genres, I try not to fret too much about, because I'm not properly schooled enough, and when I am, I'll be fixing things, I guess. Although I have Aphex Twin's "26 Mixes for Cash" as "Techno", after consulting the Wikipedia article, I guess it might not be completely accurate. It's a fairly varied album, due to its nature, so well... :-)

28 819 songs! Jebus! "Hopefully", lots of it is pirated, because by my rough estimates, that'd be worth enough money to buy at least one Mazda Protegé5, brand new! 8-D

[tygrbabe.livejournal.com]

28 819 songs! Jebus! "Hopefully", lots of it is pirated, because by my rough estimates, that'd be worth enough money to buy at least one Mazda Protegé5, brand new! 8-D


i call them "donations to a worthy cause" ;) i have stuff that i bought, stuff that you, obskura, cpirate and choucroute gave to me and most ov it is from denkizero's 250 gig external drive that i got after she and Dullin got a terastation :) i still have to go through and delete the stuff i don't want and add stuff from home i didn't have room for before which will take awhile. neways, you know how good i am about buying music and going to shows; the way i see it is that this is a good way for people to find out about bands by me playing it here and offering many ways to find out what's playing (like last.fm and the new adium feature the shows what's playing below your IM icon) and as soon as i have a bit ov spare $$$ i buy new albums and go to shows.

and even if i could have bought your car, you never showed me how to drive it properly ;)

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

I don't think he *knew* how to drive it properly. :)

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Right, I was forgetting about the "denkizero library of doom"!

In-person exchange of music is cool, I think, it's one of the reasons I like the cover flow thing in iTunes, as it makes for nice browsing of my music for exchanges. :-)

And don't listen to dcoombs, he's not a Montrealer, he doesn't know what he's talking about. ;-)

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

:-p

[gregorama.livejournal.com]

I tried to be as nuts about my music for a while until I realized I couldn't identify a proper music genre to save my life. In the end I just let the Media Monkey clean up the titles and I threw things into about 8 overly-simplified genres that people laugh at me for.

Yup. You're nuts. :)

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

The genres, it's sort of understandable. I make a token attempt to get them "rightish" (whether Kraftwerk is "techno" or "electronic", not too bad, but "rock" wouldn't fly).

But things like the artist and track names right seems completely within the realm of the possible, no?

And for things like baroque, I'd like to learn a bit more about such things, and being able to see when something is a chorus or a chorale, an aria or a recitation, sang by an alto or a tenor, would be pretty useful for that.

But I accept my nuttiness wholeheartedly, yeah. :-)