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  #1  
Old Aug 4, 2010, 07:57 PM
darkthunder84 darkthunder84 is offline
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Default Organising soundtrack data

Hey guys

I am in the process of encoding my entire collection in iTunes, using Apple Lossless Format.

I have reached a dilemma though:

I want to have the most complete and accurate information in each of these 3 fields (Track title, artist, and album title).

Under "Artist", what would you guys put where a track has been credited as having both a composer AND arranger? Would you put down the COMPOSER, or the ARRANGER as being the artist, or BOTH?

And also, where a performing artist is concerned (For example Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on numerous Akira Yamaoka tracks), would you bother mentioning him/her in the track title or artist? And if so, how? (Eg: O.R.T. feat. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn)

lol, I know this all sounds really obsessive, but I'm just curious as to what others have done

Thanks for your inputs!
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  #2  
Old Aug 4, 2010, 10:44 PM
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KeyLogic KeyLogic is offline
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Sup, darkthunder84. KeyLogic understands your desire to have "perfect organization" of your music collection. KeyLogic shall share some of his thoughts.

Quote:
Originally Posted by darkthunder84 View Post
I am in the process of encoding my entire collection in iTunes, using Apple Lossless Format.
It's too bad iTunes doesn't support FLAC, or does it through some means? FLAC is far more versatile then [dumb-ol proprietary] ALAC, but oh well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by darkthunder84 View Post
Under "Artist", what would you guys put where a track has been credited as having both a composer AND arranger? Would you put down the COMPOSER, or the ARRANGER as being the artist, or BOTH?
It's KeyLogic's personal decision to add the arranger in the Artist field. Unless it's a collaborative effort of both the original composer and the arranger would KeyLogic add both names.

Quote:
Originally Posted by darkthunder84 View Post
And also, where a performing artist is concerned (For example Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on numerous Akira Yamaoka tracks), would you bother mentioning him/her in the track title or artist? And if so, how? (Eg: O.R.T. feat. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn)
KeyLogic is a bit of a purist when it comes to the track titles, only displaying them according to what's in the booklet or on the official website or here on VGMdb. In the Artist field, however, KeyLogic usually adds both the names of the composer/arranger and the performer seeing as it's a collaborative effort (eg: "Akira Yamaoka & Mary Elizabeth McGlynn").

Quote:
Originally Posted by darkthunder84 View Post
lol, I know this all sounds really obsessive, but I'm just curious as to what others have done
No worries. We all become a little obsessive from time to time.
No worries. We all become a little obsessive from time to time.
No worries. We all become a little obsessive from time to time.
No worries. We all become a little obsessive from time to time.



Quote:
Originally Posted by darkthunder84 View Post
Thanks for your inputs!
Hey! So it was you! KeyLogic needs those to recharge his cyborg body, otherwise he'll...be...*offline*

z_z
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The statement above is true.

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What is "the box" that people are supposed to think outside of anyway? Hmm. Maybe it's similar to the Borg from Star Trek who dwelled as a collective hive-mind within a...box/cube. Those that deviated from this hive-mind would, in effect, be thinking outside of the box. it has both a figurative and a literal meaning.

Last edited by KeyLogic; Aug 4, 2010 at 10:50 PM.
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  #3  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 01:18 AM
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Blitz Lunar Blitz Lunar is offline
 
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what i do probably varies from the convention a bit.

Quote:
Under "Artist", what would you guys put where a track has been credited as having both a composer AND arranger? Would you put down the COMPOSER, or the ARRANGER as being the artist, or BOTH?
to me it depends on the content. for example, something like E.V.O., even though Motoaki Takenouchi arranged the soundtrack, I'd put Koichi Sugiyama as the artist, since Takenouchi just ported the music. But for something like an Akihabara Electric Circus album, I credit them in the artist field rather than the original composers.

Quote:
And also, where a performing artist is concerned (For example Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on numerous Akira Yamaoka tracks), would you bother mentioning him/her in the track title or artist? And if so, how? (Eg: O.R.T. feat. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn)
it's standard protocol to use the vocalist in the artist field instead of the composer or arranger, though as a personal thing i change songs like that to feature the composer/arranger instead. really, it depends where your values are regarding that. to the vast majority of people, the artist is the singer. i guess it also depends on the context though. i credit Megumi Ogata for the entire of her Multipheno album (simply, it's an album explicitly stated as being by her) but I would credit Hayato Matsuo for her vocal songs on anime scores.

in both these circumstances, i also try and avoid using more than one name in the artist field (it buggers with Last FM.) else I might do what you've done and credit both composers and arrangers.
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  #4  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 01:35 AM
LiquidAcid LiquidAcid is offline
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Both ID3v2 and Vorbis comment (native tagging format for MP3 and Ogg Vorbis / FLAC respectively) have multiple tags to store such information. That's how I do it:

<Performer tag> Contains vocalists, chorus performers, instrument performers and so on in multiline format
<Composer tag> Contains composer (!) information under the condition that arranger information exists, also the lyricist info and possibly who translated the lyrics is found here -- again in multiline style
<Artist tag> Contains arranger information if both composer and arranger info are known (even if both are the same). If that's not the case then the composer is entered here. So if the booklet only provides composer info then this ends up here

Example: Take track 03 from Kanon OST (http://vgmdb.net/album/543)

<Artist tag> Kazuya Takase (I've)
<Composer tag> Key / Jun Maeda (Music and Lyrics)
<Performer tag> Ayana (Vocals)

Last edited by LiquidAcid; Aug 5, 2010 at 01:51 AM.
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  #5  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 05:43 AM
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Mika Mika is offline
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I tag my music case by case, depending on the significance of things.

Like, composer vs arranger, Blitz Lunar said it well with the EVO and Akihabara Electric Circus examples. If I feel like the arrangement is significant enough, I'll use the arranger, otherwise I use the composer.

And only time I use performer as artist is when it's a singer. As in, the cases of Silent Hill stuff for example. I never use any kind of symphony orchestra performer in artist field.

I used to use "composer & singer" combo before, but that made my artist database in whatever media player I was using at the time very messy, very fast.
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  #6  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 06:04 AM
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I always, always put the original composer in the artist field.

If there is an arranger, like Lunar I look at the content. If the arrangement is a significant reworking of the original material, such as in FFX, I tag the artist field with the arranger first, comma, then composer. Whereas if it's more like a traditional arrangement (such as for a new game or for live performance, i.e. piano, orchestra, etc.), composer comes first, following by "arr. arranger's name" as is standard when reading sheet music. For example...

Final Fantasy X - The Sight of Spira looks like...
Quote:
Artist:
Masashi Hamauzu, Nobuo Uematsu
Final Fantasy VIII FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VINOSEC - Blue Fields looks like...
Quote:
Artist:
Nobuo Uematsu, arr. Shiro Hamaguchi
Final Fantasy XII - Chocobo -FFXII Version- looks like...
Quote:
Artist:
Nobuo Uematsu, arr. Hitoshi Sakimoto
Final Fantasy XIII - Cocoon de Chocobo -Let's Have A Dream II- looks like...
Quote:
Artist:
Masashi Hamauzu, Nobuo Uematsu, arr. Ryo Yamazaki
You get the idea.

I NEVER put the performer, vocalist or otherwise, in the artist field. That information gets put in the comments section for me. I rarely fill out the "original composed by" part since I always have the original composer in the artist field. The reason is, that's the first thing one sees for credit for an audio file, and to me it's important for the original composer to always be visible even if it's an arrangement.

I even do this with classical music where it's far more traditional to fill the artist field with the performer (i.e., Warsaw Philharmoic Orchestra and Chorus, North Texas Wind Ensemble, Gothenburg Brass Band, Walter Gieseking, etc.)

One credit that I will typically ignore is orchestrator when I feel that the orchestration itself is merely the adaptation of material that is already "orchestrated". Like, if someone were to take an orchestral MIDI and transcribe it note by note to paper, I would not list that person as an arranger. If, on the other hand, it's like Hamaguchi's arrangements for the FF piano collections or orchestra albums, he would be listed as arranger because there is clearly added/modified material from the original composition.

So, yeah. In some form or another, the composer always ends up somewhere in the artist tag on my files.
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  #7  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 07:23 AM
LiquidAcid LiquidAcid is offline
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From the ID3v2.4 specifications:
Code:
4.2.2.   Involved persons frames

  TPE1
   The 'Lead artist/Lead performer/Soloist/Performing group' is
   used for the main artist.

  TPE2
   The 'Band/Orchestra/Accompaniment' frame is used for additional
   information about the performers in the recording.

  TPE3
   The 'Conductor' frame is used for the name of the conductor.

  TPE4
   The 'Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by' frame contains
   more information about the people behind a remix and similar
   interpretations of another existing piece.

  TOPE
   The 'Original artist/performer' frame is intended for the performer
   of the original recording, if for example the music in the file
   should be a cover of a previously released song.

  TEXT
   The 'Lyricist/Text writer' frame is intended for the writer of the
   text or lyrics in the recording.

  TOLY
   The 'Original lyricist/text writer' frame is intended for the
   text writer of the original recording, if for example the music in
   the file should be a cover of a previously released song.

  TCOM
   The 'Composer' frame is intended for the name of the composer.

  TMCL
   The 'Musician credits list' is intended as a mapping between
   instruments and the musician that played it. Every odd field is an
   instrument and every even is an artist or a comma delimited list of
   artists.

  TIPL
   The 'Involved people list' is very similar to the musician credits
   list, but maps between functions, like producer, and names.

  TENC
   The 'Encoded by' frame contains the name of the person or
   organisation that encoded the audio file. This field may contain a
   copyright message, if the audio file also is copyrighted by the
   encoder.
So that's what Martin Nilsson and Michael Mutschler (plus all the other people mentioned in http://www.id3.org/Contributors) had in mind. Kind of an overkill when comparing this to the minimal set of recommend fields that Vorbis Comment has:
http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html
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  #8  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 05:09 PM
darkthunder84 darkthunder84 is offline
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Thanks guys, I really appreciate your ideas! It seems that this is not the sort of thing that will have a strong consensus... It really all seems to boil down to personal taste.

Personally I'm drawn to keeping things as simple as possible, to avoid a very messy database as Mika suggests!

I tend to agree with tagging the singer as the artist, since this is consistent with tagging the singer or band of an album in the artist field (All my music, both vgm soundtrack and artist album are all together in one database, so I don't want to have one rule for soundtracks and another for albums). So with the Silent Hill soundtracks I will tag Mary Elizabeth McGlynn as the artist for the applicable songs. Akira Yamaoka will still show up in the composer field, but I keep that field hidden for simplicity and aesthetic

I also think it seems more appropriate to tag the arranger as the artist. Again, for me it is about keeping things simple. When I am looking at my music in iTunes, I would like to easily see who made the music sound exactly the way it does (without getting too technical), not who wrote the very first (and different sounding) version of that song. Simply put, I feel the arranger is very much like a performing artist (singer) but without the words. So if I am going to tag a singer in the artist field (and not the composer), I should also tag the arranger (and not the composer), otherwise I would be inconsistent.

So that's how I've decided to go about my database- By tagging the arranger (where applicable) as the artist instead of the composer, and by tagging the singer as the artist again instead of the composer This is the simplest, and most consistent way I feel it can be done, without creating a complex and messy database full of ,'s and /'s
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  #9  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 05:18 PM
darkthunder84 darkthunder84 is offline
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Just to expand on my points a bit further:

When a singer covers a song on their album, for instance, Madonna's version of "American Pie", it seems completely logical to say that Madonna is the "artist". That's how I think of an arranged track on a soundtrack - a cover version of another song.

Anyway, now I'm beginning to rant
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  #10  
Old Aug 5, 2010, 05:40 PM
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Secret Squirrel Secret Squirrel is offline
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We might want to consider expanding our creditable roles while taking the ID3v2.4 spec into consideration.
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  #11  
Old Aug 10, 2010, 04:04 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by darkthunder84 View Post
When a singer covers a song on their album, for instance, Madonna's version of "American Pie", it seems completely logical to say that Madonna is the "artist". That's how I think of an arranged track on a soundtrack - a cover version of another song.
This reminds me of a similar question I added input to back in May. I even answered very similarly:

Quote:
As for listing composer vs. arranger, etc, I like to list the arranger over the composer and here's why: the arranger is responsible for why a song sounds a certain way. For example, are we going to credit Nobuo Uematsu for every version of the Final Fantasy Victory Fanfare even if he played no part in the way it sounds in the newer Final Fantasy games? Those credits should go out to who "covered" them so to speak (like giving Hitoshi Sakimoto credit for the version in Final Fantasy XII), and like Ira said you can always put Nobuo's name in the composer filed (versus the artist field). Otherwise it's like crediting Britney Spears for the cover of "Oops I Did It Again" that Children of Bodom did.
Obviously, there isn't a "right" way to fill the artist field because it depends on your interpretation of what the "artist" of a song is. Even when a game's soundtrack has only one sole composer, there are sometimes other people involved in making the music sound just the way it is. But the easiest thing for me to say is that I always put the arranger in the "artist" field rather than a composer.

Last edited by Medina; Aug 10, 2010 at 04:07 AM.
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  #12  
Old Aug 14, 2010, 01:18 PM
Maxo Maxo is offline
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I always put composer only under the composer tag. For artist, I put arranger and or performer. Sometimes, if one performer (or group) does an entire album, I'll put them under 'album artist' and leave arranger to the artist tag and composer to the composer tag.
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