I'd welcome thoughts from users with classical / jazz / other multi-artist albums (and our friendly developer) on the best way to tag multiple artists and instruments and for Muso to display them. This may or may not result in a feature request, but at least will help with the wiki page I am doing on classical music tagging.
What I have been doing is arguably inconsistent, because it has evolved rather than been thought through fully. Initially, for solo artists (e.g. piano sonatas) I would put the artist name in the artist tag and the instrument in a custom "Instrument" tag. Similarly for concertos, I would use this tagging for the soloist and put the Orchestra and Conductor in the Band and Conductor tags. Simple. This enabled Muso to find (say) all piano music.
For tracks featuring a number of artists (e.g. opera) I would put the names of the artist in the Performer tag followed by the instrument/voice in brackets, with multiple artists separated by semi-colons.
This put me in a slight quandary for quartets, but I plumped for putting the quartet in as the Band with the members in the Performer tag and their instruments in brackets.
However for Duets I have basically doubled up the soloist approach - i.e. the performers in the Artist tag (separated by ";") and their instruments in the same order in the Instrument tag. Usually there is no band name.
So now I have some artists who are listed as Artist, but also (on other albums) as Performer (with their instrument). Also, because of the way I have tagged, Muso screen shows the instrument for "Performer" but not for "Artist". Furthermore, quartets and Performers only ever appear as "supporting artists", even if there is a blank Artist tag: if there is no Artist tag, Muso, in classical mode, treats the composer as the Artist. There are a number of ways this could be fixed, but I am not sure what is best:
1. To put the Instrument after the Artist name (in brackets). I can do this using an import action, but it doesn't work for Duets, so I would have to recode Duets either
(a) with both artists (and their instruments) in the Artist tag separated with ";" or
(b) in the Performer tag like Quartets, but without a band name, and the composer would take over as Artist.
Maybe there would be another way if Muso had a field for Instrument, as opposed to it being a custom tag.
2. Put the Band in the Artist tag if there is no main performer either
(a) manually or
(b) for Muso to do this automatically (I can't think how to do this with an import action).
Comments please on the merits of these and other approaches.
Tagging multiple artists and instruments
Re: Tagging multiple artists and instruments
Sorry for not responding sooner on this - I was away for a couple of weeks.
I put the performers in the Performer field (separated by ; ), whether they are soloists, duettists or part of a quartet, etc, then (where it is relevant) append their instrument (or voice type) in brackets afterwards, eg. Steven Isserlis (cello). It's best to be consistent and always use Performer rather than Artist. I realise this doesn't allow you to have the instrument as a field in it's own right, eg. to put in a hierarchy (by Composer by Instrument), but if you wanted that ability you could either use one of the spare fields for Instrument(s), or a sub-genre to more clearly define any major roles of the performance eg. "Piano Concerto", "Cello Concerto", "Operatic Duet" etc. What this doesn't do satisfactorily is to allow both instrument as a field in it's own right, AND the ability to tie that instrument to a performer. But I could implement something special for the Performer field in Muso if we make the bracket suffix method a Muso standard. Eg for the Performer value:
Jaroslav Vodrázka (organ); Libuse Domaninská (soprano); Vera Soukupová (contra-alto); Benno Blachut (tenor); Eduard Haken (bass); Czech Philharmonic Chorus (chorus)
it could keep all these performers for the track, and keep all the roles/instruments (in brackets) separately, while also having the option of using them together. I think I would term the bit in brackets an optional "Performer Role". Just the seeds of an idea at present...
I put the performers in the Performer field (separated by ; ), whether they are soloists, duettists or part of a quartet, etc, then (where it is relevant) append their instrument (or voice type) in brackets afterwards, eg. Steven Isserlis (cello). It's best to be consistent and always use Performer rather than Artist. I realise this doesn't allow you to have the instrument as a field in it's own right, eg. to put in a hierarchy (by Composer by Instrument), but if you wanted that ability you could either use one of the spare fields for Instrument(s), or a sub-genre to more clearly define any major roles of the performance eg. "Piano Concerto", "Cello Concerto", "Operatic Duet" etc. What this doesn't do satisfactorily is to allow both instrument as a field in it's own right, AND the ability to tie that instrument to a performer. But I could implement something special for the Performer field in Muso if we make the bracket suffix method a Muso standard. Eg for the Performer value:
Jaroslav Vodrázka (organ); Libuse Domaninská (soprano); Vera Soukupová (contra-alto); Benno Blachut (tenor); Eduard Haken (bass); Czech Philharmonic Chorus (chorus)
it could keep all these performers for the track, and keep all the roles/instruments (in brackets) separately, while also having the option of using them together. I think I would term the bit in brackets an optional "Performer Role". Just the seeds of an idea at present...