"Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic."
— Jean Sibelius
Tagging Classical Music
I received a bunch of emails yesterday asking about my approach to tagging classical music so I thought I’d share my approach.
Since I use a Squeezebox as my main transport and JRiver Media Center for computer playback, both of which support custom FLAC tags, I devised a schema that allows me to browse my collection in ways that make sense for classical music. Here are the tags I use:
- ALBUM TITLE (Respighi: Pines of Rome)
- TITLE (Pines of Rome: I. I pini di Villa Borghese)
- WORK (Pines of Rome) *
- COMPOSER (Respighi, Ottorino)
- CONDUCTOR (Marriner, Neville)
- ENSEMBLE (Academy of St. Martin in the Fields) *
- PERFORMER ( )
- GENRE (Orchestral;Tone Poem)
- ERA (Impressionist) *
- LABEL (Philips)
- SAMPLERATE (88.2) *
So rather than trying to cram information into other existing tags, I simply add my own custom tags: Work, Ensemble, Era and Samplerate. With all my music tagged this way, I can browse my music in ways that make sense:
- Composer > Work > Ensemble > Conductor
- Era > Genre
- Label > Samplerate
I’ve used this approach for a few years now and although tagging discs requires a bit more effort, in the end my collection is organized and easy to browse.
Just finished a great book by Jessica Duchen that looks into the life of Korngold, a composer who doesn’t get nearly enough respect in the classical world.
Spent a couple hours this afternoon ripping/tagging a few discs. Only 1800 more to go!
Dropped off my turntable this morning at Living Sound Stereo for upgrading and had a great chat with Yan as usual. Two thumbs up for LSS!
