Maxing out Muso. Period.

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MDE
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:05 am

Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by MDE »

I am in the process of adding the final (? ;)) piece of functionality to my "Classical Extras" plugin for MusicBrainz Picard. This will cover genres, instruments, keys, work dates and periods. All of this data pretty much maxes out the Muso import fields, but there are just enough, I think. I hope the result will demonstrate the combined capabilities of MusicBrainz + Muso in providing the best metadata/library system on the planet for digital classical music collections :ugeek: I'll post here when it's done.
One area where I would appreciate some input is around classical music periods. Muso already has a pretty good way of dealing with these by matching the composer birth (+20) and death dates to the specified periods. What "Classical Extras" will do is to add a degree of additional precision by using the date of the composition, if available, as well as providing an explicit file tag for "period". Otherwise I want it to match the Muso behaviour. The plugin imports all the relevant data from the Reference.xml file, so that should be possible. However, the wiki describes the matching process thus:
"it matches their "productive" years - 20 to death - to an editable list of periods"
Clearly this might produce an overlapping situation, which can be viewed by selecting the hierarchy "Classical Period -> Composer". Given this, with, say, Beethoven (1770-1827), I would expect him to appear in "Classical (1750-1820)" and "Early Romantic (1820-1850)". However, he also appears in "Late Romantic (1850-1910)". This seems to be because I have an album of his music which also contains music by Dvorak. However, I have other albums with Beethoven and other composers which don't have this effect. The difference seems to be whether both composers are titled artists. I am assuming that with my custom "period" tag, everything will operate at a track level, so that this effect will not occur.
I will also post a "feature request" re custom fields and hierarchies, as there seem to be some inconsistencies and quirks.
MDE
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:05 am

Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by MDE »

On further investigation, it would seem that other hierarchies operate at the album level. The image below shows a "work date -> work" hierarchy (both custom fields). As can be seen, a fair number of Beethoven sonatas appear in the "composed 1809-1810" group, but they were not all composed then. For example, every track under Sonata no. 8 has a work date of 1798, so I can only imagine it appears in this list because it is in an album which does have works composed in 1809-1810.
Work dates.jpg
EDIT: I should add that not all hierarchies seem to be affected by this "album level" grouping.
musoware
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Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by musoware »

I'm looking into this... I remember this logic being quite complicated.
musoware
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Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by musoware »

Yes it's as you say - there's a problem with classical period and classical homeland as it assigns these as album attributes based on the titled artists (composers). It's most evident when you select by Composer by Classical Homeland as you'd expect only one homeland per composer, but it can show others because the composer has works on other albums where he either shares title credit with another composer, or the other composer is the only titled artist (through the album artist field, or conductor who also happens to be a composer as in the case of Boulez here).
Capture.PNG
I'll have to delve into this and see what can be done.

I'm not sure about custom fields also breaking down by matching at album level, I can't seem to be able to reproduce that, it looks like they do match at track level.
MDE
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:05 am

Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by MDE »

Thanks for looking into this. I'll provide a database and a click sequence to demonstrate as best I can.
MDE
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:05 am

Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by MDE »

See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=491&p=3588#p3588 for related discussion. If in the last screen of that post, you select "Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, BWV 1001-1006" you should get this:
Bach.jpg
If you go to the Vanessa-Mae album (err..) then you will see that the only piano is on an unrelated track, not the Bach.
musoware
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Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by musoware »

MDE wrote:On further investigation, it would seem that other hierarchies operate at the album level. The image below shows a "work date -> work" hierarchy (both custom fields). As can be seen, a fair number of Beethoven sonatas appear in the "composed 1809-1810" group, but they were not all composed then. For example, every track under Sonata no. 8 has a work date of 1798, so I can only imagine it appears in this list because it is in an album which does have works composed in 1809-1810.
The attachment Work dates.jpg is no longer available
EDIT: I should add that not all hierarchies seem to be affected by this "album level" grouping.
I'm seeing this after a mod to work round your duplicate Lyricist custom field:
Capture2.PNG
I've also noticed your hierarchy never seems to have a title, like mine.
MDE
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:05 am

Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by MDE »

That looks a lot better. I only don't get a title for the custom fields that don't work properly.
The reason why there are 2 import lines for lyricist is because of the issue discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=465
So I need to to fill "Lyricist" if either #LYRICIST or #TEXT exists.
I changed them to both use the same Custom field, but it made no difference.
MDE
Posts: 479
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 12:05 am

Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by MDE »

Using "#LYRICIST#TEXT" with no conditionality ticked, does the trick in one line, I think - all the custom fields seem to be OK then.
EDIT: Of course it won't work if both tags exist, but since it is an MP3 vs FLAC thing, it should be one or the other.
musoware
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Re: Maxing out Muso. Period.

Post by musoware »

Fix in 2.6.55.01 should now handle more than one tag feeding the same custom field. But as you say combining them into one will also work.
Check if things work better for you with this version please, including the title.
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