Submissions - Artist Roles

[Gigablah]

Time to plan the expansion of artist roles!

Currently we have:
Composer
Arranger
Performer
Lyricist
SFX Artist
Programmer
Mastering Engineer
Mixing Engineer
Recording Engineer

I'm planning to add sub-roles, which may look like the following. Yes, most are based on actual credits I've seen:

Composer
Arranger

Music Arrangement
Strings Arrangement
Vocal Arrangement
Chorus Arrangement
Remix

Vocalist

Vocal
Chorus
Voice (includes Talk?)
Rap
Scream (Wikipedia lists it as "death growl")

Instrumentalist

(freetext field for whatever musical instrument)

Lyricist

Lyrics
Lyrics Translation

Audio Engineer

Mastering Engineer
Mixing Engineer
Recording Engineer

SFX Artist
Programmer

Audio Programming
Synthesizer Programming



Some other possible technical roles (most probably will consist of unlinked artists):

Conductor
Producer
Graphic Artist

Package Illustrator
Package Designer
Calligrapher




Violent objections welcome!

[Cedille]

Some random thought; I have no problem with conductor and even wonder why they aren't already regarded as VGM artists. On the other hand, we SHOULDN'T create any Graphic Artist entries unless they have some other more musical credits (I know of several manga artists who are involved as performers or lyricists), but I know most people would agree with this.

How about segmentalizing "Composer" credits, too? If the composer's past compositions are merely featured, I think it's definitely worth separating it from the credits they get for composing something new.

[Gigablah]

The reason I don't want to segment roles based on active involvement is that I'd have to do it for almost every other role as well, so a better way is to make it a separate field (the "featured" checkbox).

And yeah, that's why graphic artist credits should mainly be unlinked (alternatively link to the artist's website).

[Cedille]

The reason I don't want to segment roles based on active involvement is that I'd have to do it for almost every other role as well, so a better way is to make it a separate field (the "featured" checkbox).

That's a really good point (although I don't remember ever linking performers or lyricists as featured, while we should, technically). If we have a good plan to solve the current issue with the "feat." function (e.g. lumping official releases all together with a swarm of Doujin albums), perhaps we don't need to separate credits based on involvement.

I don't think it's so wrong at all, but frankly, I feel a bit odd about bundling Programmer and Synthesizer Programmer, since the latter's actual role is often rather close to that of Arrangers (and thus referred as Synth Operators, Synth manipulators). I lost interest in the VGM technology age ago (or I just stopped pretending to know something), but Sound Programmer's main work can just be the management of sound drivers or audio channels. I guess Minoru Akao was often credited just because his sound driver was used in that game.


How about adding "Orchestration" as a sub-set of Arrangers?

[Gigablah]

So I guess it would be like


Arranger

Music Arrangement
Strings Arrangement
Orchestra Arrangement
Vocal Arrangement
Chorus Arrangement
Synthesizer Programming
Remix



And "Programmer" becomes just "Audio Programmer" without a subrole.


I wonder if we should add a "Mentioned" role just for the novelty of seeing which artists were specially thanked in an album's liner notes. Won't go in the discography, of course.

Should "remastering" be a different role from "mastering engineer"?

[Blitz Lunar]

in this instance, how are you differentiating music arrangement and remix? yeah i know, that old chestnut. :)

[Dag]

rap/scream seem hard to differentiate, or may need a listen to verify/moderate ('screamed' rather than 'sung' a track?)
Remix always confuses the hell out to me too.

What about some kind of generic 'sound'/'uncertain' role? ie.- some staff roll has "Sound: dude1, dude2". You know dude1 composed, dude2 def. did "something" (SE/music/programming..). You could link dude2 as 'sound', to fix later (interviews, etc). That way the discographies are more complete, yet we indicate their role is still under verification so people don't assume composition.
(this would be great to me for SNK/Capcom/Konami albums with no scans, or no liner notes)

An instrument combo like the scans captions (combo as base freetext + further freetext) would be nice.


Also, how do you guys feel about adding artists with few/one role? I think the more the merrier and saves time for later linking (ex.- one-hit-wonder resurfaces), but maybe it clutters the DB?
Similarly, I'm tempted to separate some aliases (ex maiden names) since seems more logical (name+kanji).
Any revision of the alias system planned...?


EDIT: some kind of "click here, show other roles" and "hide the performers (there are so many)" buttons in the pages would be quite useful...

[Gigablah]

If it sounds like "Otherworld" from FFX, then it's "scream"/"growl". You'll mostly find these type of vocals on heavy rock or metal songs, a quick listen should be enough.

If an arrangement incorporates the original track recording (for example, changing pitch and tempo and adding beats and scratches) then it's a remix. If it's mostly constructed from scratch with different instruments and styles, it's a regular arrangement.

I'll think about your other suggestions, in particular the issue with artist aliases I do plan to fix by having "identities" which aren't full-fledged entries, but are more powerful than simple text aliases.

[Cedille]

So I guess it would be like


Arranger

Music Arrangement
Strings Arrangement
Orchestra Arrangement
Vocal Arrangement
Chorus Arrangement
Synthesizer Programming
Remix



And "Programmer" becomes just "Audio Programmer" without a subrole.

I think Synthesizer Programmers can also be placed in the same category as Audio Engineer, since if we place Synthesizer programming as a sub-role of Arrangement, it also means we have to start to add them in the arranger field for the sake of consistency, but this is something we basically have not done until now (aside of some exceptions (http://vgmdb.net/album/19237)). That being said, I actually don't mind crediting Synth Programmer/Operator/Manipulator as Arrangers, especially for DS game soundtracks which often contain both the in-game versions and the original versions.

If one of the main points about this role segmentation is to coincide with how the officially provided (=printed) credits are, any common credit can qualify as a sub-role, so I'd whole-heatedly welcome "Orchestration" and "Lyric Translation", both of which we've already added to the arranger and lyricist fields, respectively (and of course, those manually specified instrumentalists). If there are a number of albums with "Remixed by..." or "Rap by..." credits and we just follow the official credits, I have no issue. Otherwise, I think we're bound to do some subjective judging. I'd like to listen to what fans of vocal music think of.

Another credit that is not so infrequently seen is writing/transcribing/correcting scores of an orchestra. Their roles might be less significant than Orchestrator is, yet I feel like it still can be seen as a more musically substantial position than some others (then again, I really know nothing about orchestra music production, so I could be wrong).

Anyway, I suck at posting a simple message :(

[Datschge]

Not that it will matter in the big picture (as credits usually aren't fine grained enough anyway) but I find the omission of "sound engineer" baffling. I'd probably replace "sfx artist" with that. A sound engineer is not necessarily a synth programmer for me as the latter's job is to tune an existing synthesizer (like FM synths etc.) while a sound engineer can also record real sounds and instruments and needs to tweak and optimize them to fit the limited wavetable space while still sounding fine in use (like I'd imagine the idea for "sfx artist"'s job was, but funnily enough e.g. in case of SNES the sfx job is more one of synth programming, programming the SPC700's white noise channel...).

Edit: I guess Minoru Akao was often credited just because his sound driver was used in that game.
That may have been the case after the SNES days (can't say either way) but back then the was a great sound engineer/sfx artist/synth programmer all in one (the famous real time generated wind sound in FF6, real time XOR generated e-guitar squarewave instrument in RS3 and FM:GH just to name the feats I can't recall seeing from any other developer).

[Gigablah]

I presume "Sound Engineer" can be used for generic "Sound" credits as well? Would "Sound Design" fit as a subrole?

Or even


Sound Creator

Sound Engineering
Sound Design
SFX Artist
Synthesizer Programming (unless we put this under Audio Engineer)



Or we could put all of those under Audio Engineer...

[Cedille]

I do hate to make a rambling post one after another, but we can
credit sound effect staffs just because they're printed in the booklet which sometime list persons who have directly nothing to with the contents of the soundtrack? And not because the soundtrack in question covers sound effects as well as music from the game? As we basically don't credit any composer whose name appears in the game's staff roll, if it's clear that the person's
composition isn't released in the soundtrack, I'd like to have more reasons to credit sound effect designes, other than whatever the booklet states.

[Gigablah]

Eventually we'll be able to credit artists to tracks and products rather than just albums, so those roles will be needed. But still, there will be a way to separately determine whether a credited role applies to the discography as well, or some other appropriate section (probably expand the "featured" checkbox into something more powerful).

[Datschge]

@Gigablah: putting all under audio engineer is probably the most consequential approach. I wouldn't be against that.

I'm afraid in general credits will always be more fuzzy than the clear cut way we try to come up with right now.

[Secret Squirrel]

I think we should revive this effort, since it ties i nicely with what I'm working on for products. One idea I was thinking about is to put a couple of sub-roles under composer so that we could separate the OP/ED composition from the regular game music composition. I saw this somewhere else -- maybe it was erogamescape.


Composer

BGM
OP/ED/Other Vocal

[Razakin]

I like the idea of separating main composers from OP/ED composers, insert songs could probably be bundled with main. Char song composers would be bundled with OP/ED in my eyes.

But I wonder would that separation need yet another colors in album page, and perhaps some color code explanation why some artists are in blue etc. for those who don't really know about it?

[dancey]

This probably deserves a separate thread, but can we somehow differentiate from sourceable credits (inserts, game credits, books, etc) and "unreliably" sourceable credits (twitter replies, facebook, linked-in, assumptions based on composition/sound, etc)?

I apologize if this is something already discussed somewhere (I don't keep up with every thread), but this artist separation could delve further into the assumption area with non-sourceable stuff. I wholeheartedly support the community and the dedication everyone here spends trying to find and uncover this information but ultimately I think it needs to be separated and delineated. Some memorable examples I can bring up are the Sonic thread and Breath of Fire I/II threads. A good composer/group example is falcom sound team jdk. Yeah, it's cool that I just realized Tenmon participated in the Zwei!! soundtrack, and makes sense that I like his scores, but ultimately the actual product just says "falcom sound team jdk".

*shrug* Probably too big an ambition to develop but I think there's some merit in exploring it.

[Gigablah]

A quick idea for above: change "featured credit" to "unlisted credit", and add a way to provide a "source" for almost every field and link (along with the type) upon an edit. It would have to be viewable somewhere, too. Maybe in a separate tab on the album page.

[dancey]

A quick idea for above: change "featured credit" to "unlisted credit", and add a way to provide a "source" for almost every field and link (along with the type) upon an edit. It would have to be viewable somewhere, too. Maybe in a separate tab on the album page.

Something like that might work. I think just identifying a sourceable vs a non-sourceable would have to suffice given the fact that URLs may or may not break over time and unless someone took a screenshot we'd eventually lose the source.

[Kaleb.G]

I feel anything with Producer or Mixer is an important title. Having been immersed in the world of music production for a little while, I know it can be as significant to the music as arranging, if not more so. Director might also be one to look at.

[Datschge]

Sound director is often a crucial role, but unfortunately its most often not a single credited role but split up among all the people heading the planning of different parts of a game (event planner, game design, etc.). Very hard to draw a line with these as it can be handled very differently between developers and even single games.

[Kaleb.G]

Yeah. The problem with a lot of these roles is that they can mean different things for different albums. A sound engineer on one album may have completely different tasks from a sound engineer on another album. Same goes for directors, etc.

Should "remastering" be a different role from "mastering engineer"?

Mastering and remastering are the same thing. The latter just specifies it was redone. I don't think you'll find both roles on the same album... unless for some reason they want to credit the guy whose work they essentially undid.

Unlike some of these other titles, Mastering Engineer is actually a very specific role. It's about putting the last layer of polish on a musical work to prepare it for the destination media.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering#Process

EDIT: Oh, yes. I see what you mean. (http://vgmdb.net/album/307) In this case, I think they are only crediting Yuka Koizumi for "historical" reasons. You can rest assured that all of her hard work was completely scrapped from this album.

It's funny. People often say mastering should not be done by the mixer, but rather a separate person. In the case of SQEX-10068~9 (which most people found to sound worse than the original SSCX-10042) it seems this adage holds true.

[Efendija]

Anyways, this might not be the best time to bring this up, though it seems to me the general agreement is that synthesizer programmers should not be entered as performers; instead they can be linked up with the programmer role and of course be mentioned in the notes. Is this right?
If it is, there's some inconsistency present, example Keishi Urata (http://vgmdb.net/artist/8508), he is linked sometimes as a performer, sometimes as a programmer even though the album always credits him for 'synth' (or synth manipulation). So he's aperformer for Ghost in the Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX O.S.T. but for Ghost in the Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX O.S.T.2 he becomes a programmer (again, he's credited only for synths in both GITS SAC OST 1 & 2.
Then for recent (2012) works, he isn't linked up as a performer anymore, he's strictly a programmer and that's why I think there was an agreement here the synth programmers should be linked only as such.
If so, should the changes be made for albums where synth programmers are credited as performers, meaning the performer links should be deleted and replaced with programmer role, for the sake of consistency?
Thank you for your time.

(edit: I see the function 'Manage Credits' is a way to go for multiple role changes, very useful)

[RomanticScent]

In my opinion "Synth Programmers" should be linked as performers.
For example, I program the keys of my synthesizer to sound the way I want it to be. Synthesizer is a musical instrument, So, by programming the synth keys, I am already doing music, or, I am already performing music.

I agree in one subhect, that is when the booklet does not have enough info so we can know what "Programmer" means. Normally it is always associated for synthesizer programming, but we do not have the luxury to Guess these things, because we try to be as truthfull as we can with the infos we add in here.

So my conclusion is:
Synthesizer Programmer / Keys Programming / Synth Programmer (which is all the same, just different smell) should be credited as Performer
Whoever;
If we only have info just saying "Programmer", we don't really know what that artist in question programmed.

[nextday]

If it is, there's some inconsistency present, example Keishi Urata (http://vgmdb.net/artist/8508), he is linked sometimes as a performer, sometimes as a programmer even though the album always credits him for 'synth' (or synth manipulation). So he's aperformer for Ghost in the Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX O.S.T. but for Ghost in the Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX O.S.T.2 he becomes a programmer (again, he's credited only for synths in both GITS SAC OST 1 & 2.
Then for recent (2012) works, he isn't linked up as a performer anymore, he's strictly a programmer and that's why I think there was an agreement here the synth programmers should be linked only as such.
I was the one that added the Ghost in the Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX O.S.T.2 credits. I was also the one that added the credits for the 2012 albums. So it's just me in your examples.

That's how I always handle synth manipulation/programming credits.

[Efendija]

Yea, yea, I can see it now... I can also see I've linked him for the two Maaya Sakamoto singles as a .... performer....O_O oh, CHz linked him as a programmer, only for one album though...

So isn't there an agreement about this?

[Secret Squirrel]

I think if a booklet credits someone as "Synth", it's kind of ambiguous just what the role is. In a lot of cases, we might have assumed someone was actually playing a synthesizer as an instrument, which would be a performer.

BTW, it is a good time to revive this thread, because I need to implement some changes to the available roles before we start linking products to artists.

[Cedille]

Dag said a similar thing, but I think we'd benefit from roles like "Music" or "Artist". Those are really vague and generic, but we have not few cases it's really hard to determine exactly what role a credit ever means; composer, arranger or else (e.g. iTunes tags, Donkey Kong Returns (http://vgmdb.net/album/26314) game credits (http://vgmdb.net/album/26314), some SQ albums (http://vgmdb.net/db/covers.php?do=view&cover=151835)).

The only (yet big) problem I forecast is it might not be very fit for our current album page design where only composers, arrangers and performers are shown and the rest hidden. You know, I'm virtually suggesting that we should move some artists that are assumed to be composers to other fields that could be hidden.

[Jormungand]

IMO, performance and synth programming are two very distinct roles.

To call both performers would be, for example, to say Ryo Yamazaki and Noriko Mitose had the same role in the Chrono Cross soundtrack.

Synth programming is part of the technical aspect of music production, but does not necessarily include the creation of (composition) or performance of music. If a synth programmer were to, say, play his/her programmed keyboard on a track, that's an entirely different role: performance.

The actual programming aspect is not performance. If it were, then Roland, Yamaha, Casio, etc. would need to be credited as performers on all albums in which one of their programmed products is used.

[Datschge]

I think we'd benefit from roles like "Music" or "Artist".
Maybe roles could be realized as having (more) different levels of specificness? So then if/as long the specific nature of an involvement is not known we could fall back to the next higher thus less specific level. Besides a couple top levels the resulting hierarchy then ought to be freely expandable based on actual credits given.


Re: Synth programming (as in creating specific sounds) to me is closer to performance than programming. Performance is the act of realizing something that isn't there otherwise, live performing musicians give depth to music through their individualistic (more or less emotional) playing styles. Music put together from ready-made sounds and instruments can comparatively sound lifeless, well done synth programming can offset this (though in many cases I'd actually put it closer to the way "arranger" is currently used, e.g. in the cases of sequenced music which involves sound design and working with channel scarcity).

[Secret Squirrel]

I have a new proposal, which I reworked to satisfy a new requirement that we cannot split up the current top-level categories (like was proposed with Peformers -> Vocalists & Instrumentalists) because it would take years to edit that change into all of our albums. Note that the wording isn't final, or even parallel yet.


Composer

BGM Composer
Song Composer (OP/ED)

Arranger

Music Arrangement
Strings Arrangement
Orchestral Arrangement
Vocal Arrangement
Chorus Arrangement
Remixing

Performer

Vocal
Dramatic
Self
Instrumental

Additional freetext field for instrument?


Lyricist

Lyrics
Translation

Technical

Mastering Engineer
Mixing Engineer
Recording Engineer
Audio Programming
Snythesizer Programming
SFX Artist

Management

Producer
Conductor
Designer/Artist



As before, we are qualifying the existing album-artist links with an additional more detailed field. Instrumentalists will require box for typing the instrument. We could make this a list, but there are a lot of instruments, so it might be easier to type than to find them in a list.

[Efendija]

More choices for arranging are definitely needed. Translation role for lyrics is also great addition.
I'm personally against freetext field for specifying instruments if it has to be done one by one, here's what I mean - here (http://vgmdb.net/album/16054) we have some 20 or so violin players. It would be... not convenient if we have to type 20 times (even just copy & pasting it, that's way more realistic) for every instrumentalist. And there are other instrument groups. It will be more tolerable if we can tick a checkbox next to the artist (still ticking it 20 times xD) and enter the name of the instrument in freetext field only once and do some sort of apply button that will of course fill out other 19 fields with the same instrument.
Even so, just having the 'Instrumentalist' would be fine, without freetext field. That's not problem when there's just a few instrumentalists, but when something like Call of Duty comes (http://vgmdb.net/album/21864), happy times....... We still have notes: type "violin" - and 20 names after. Still beats freteext :D But that's only a personal opinion.
What happens if we, with the information available, can't specify the roles any further? To stay with the orchestra as an example, sometimes all orchestra players are credited just as 'musicians', so we don't know what instrument they played (except few solo instrumentalists). Can we leave them only as instrumentalists?

[Datschge]

Performer > Instrumental should pull the list from the artist's profile (where it makes the most sense) instead being offered as a free text field in every single work.

[Secret Squirrel]

That's an interesting idea. We could specify the instruments they play in the artist profile, and then use the short list while linking albums.

What happens if we, with the information available, can't specify the roles any further? To stay with the orchestra as an example, sometimes all orchestra players are credited just as 'musicians', so we don't know what instrument they played (except few solo instrumentalists). Can we leave them only as instrumentalists?

We will always be able to choose "performer" with no additional qualification, just like now.

[Efendija]

^ It's all good then :D

[nextday]

I agree that there should be more for arrangement. Or just a freetext field for arrangement. Because some that I've seen aren't listed above, like Horns Arrangement.

[Efendija]

^ That sounds right, in fact, a freetext field could be a nice addition to almost all main roles because there's always a possibility a certain (rare) sub-role could be forgotten.

So it would be like: main roles -> sub-roles menu + freetext field for any sub-role which isn't in the menu (from the same category of course - let's just assume strings arr./chorus arr./remixers etc get added in the menu as choices, but horns arr. doesn't, so to credit that arrangement, one would use arrangers freetext field to specify the role, and use menu choices for other arrangers).

[nextday]

Any progress on this? Figure I should ask since it's been a month since the last post.

[Secret Squirrel]

I haven't implemented anything yet. I am not sure that what I proposed has been vetted enough, and really probably ought to see what Blah thinks about it.

I'm going to be out of town for the next few days, but I could start working on some of this after I get back.

[Efendija]

I just want to add that lyrics field should become visible in album view mode, like this:

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/2992/greenshot20120916202856.png

[nextday]

I haven't implemented anything yet. I am not sure that what I proposed has been vetted enough, and really probably ought to see what Blah thinks about it.

I'm going to be out of town for the next few days, but I could start working on some of this after I get back.
Alright. I guess we'll just wait until you're back to discuss if any more changes need to be made.
I just want to add that lyrics field should become visible in album view mode.
Agree about this one. It's never really made sense to not have it visible. After all, there's a very large amount of vocal albums in the database.

At the very least it should be enabled for albums with the vocal classification. The only problem is that there's a bunch of albums (mostly soundtracks) that don't have the vocal classification simply because they only have 1 or 2 vocal tracks.