Bootlegs and Recording Matchings

I am about to add 2 Paul McCartney bootlegs and was wondering what exactly to do. Do I match each track as best as possible in the recording tab or do I leave it all blank and disambiguate the whole lot afterwards? Looking at other bootlegs, they only get disambiguated when the whole release is from the same concert/date/location.

Looking at other mixed bootlegs like this one here Bootleg in question , I noticed there seems to be no Recording Matching or Disambiguation.

To disambiguate, I will have to click on each song for example track 1 CD 1 Magical Mystery Tour which takes me to official and bootleg appearances of that track. Now using the ‘find’ feature for the song length (2.43) i find 2 entries but the only relevant one states,
Des Moines 2005
Unofficial live • Released in 2014
2:43 • Live
Concert - From [the concert in Des Moines, USA on Oct 27, 2005

So I would have to do this process for the whole 4 CD’s which would be painstakingly time consuming.
So do I match as best as possible or not match ans disambiguate them all. Keep in mind the following quote from the main article.

CD 1 and CD 2
Dave has placed his notes for the first two cd’s in the main article. For some tracks, he has indicated that he could choose from 2 or 3 sources. However, he hasn’t noted which was his final decision, it’s difficult to say where exactly some tracks come from. So, I’ll post the sources for these cd’s here and your guess is as good as mine.

A. The Space Within US – a dvd assembled from concerts during the US Tour, to promote his 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard album. Recorded in November and December 2005 and released on November 16, 2006
B. Paul McCartney in Red Square – Recorded live in Red Square, Moscow, Russia on May 24, 2003. Released partially on DVD on June 14, 2005.
C. Paul McCartney in Red Square – Recorded live in St. Petersburg, Russia on June 20 24, 2003. Released partially bonus on the European version of the DVD
D. Glastonbury – Concert recorded during the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, Somerset, England, on June 26, 2004 and released on the DVD The McCartney Years on November 12, 2007.
E. St. Petersburg video – mono, from an inline tape from the concert above

I’m not 100% following I don’t think, but I’ll try fill in info that might be helpful?

If you don’t know what recording it really is I don’t think matching just based on track times is a good idea. If it’s a live recording of unknown origin it’s better to just leave it its own recording in MB.

If you do know for a track I think it’s great to match to a recording and disambiguate! I don’t think you have to do all or none. Any info is good info.

This kind of thing can be painstaking, but also quite enjoyable if you’re into that kind of thing :stuck_out_tongue:

At least you know you would be providing a service, as there isn’t anywhere to easily get that info at the moment (as it seems you’ve found), so you would be doing the legwork for the next person.

However you’re not obliged to do anything so stick to what you enjoy, as long as it’s helpful to the DB in some way.

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The other bootlegs were from Musicbrainz search, not this one, this link is the album I want to add.
I only searched for McCartney bootlegs to get an idea of what others did, from what I saw I should disambiguate the specific tracks on CD 3 and 4 for example CD 3 track 1 From “The Secret Website Show”, on Dec 16, 2002 which is off a concert then leave all the mixed tracks with no info as ‘live’ only.

Due to the nature and lack of info of the uncommented tracks, they could be off any live show and yes they are all live tracks. If you say exact track length matching would be inaccurate then no info can be put into the random tracks. I on the other hand i think exact track length from that site would be highly accurate for 2 reasons.

  1. A track will only be based off certain sources, there may be 30 releases of one track but the exact length will not be on multiple recordings of that track.
  2. All cross references of a track on that site are used within that site so exact length matching must be the correct track. Correct me if I am wrong.

The only way for you guys to know is to go to that link, choose a song then read the correlations on the songs page, you will get all known bootleg and official releases with places, dates, venues, length etc.

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Hmm if you’re saying that compilation is definitely using exactly the same track length as at least one cross reference, and Dave hasn’t done any cutting of his own from sources, this makes sense.

I don’t know why there wouldn’t be the same length on multiple recordings but I’ll take your word for it.

This sounds good to me.

edit: If you know the source of a track on a mixed CD you can certainly match it to the correct location though. Sometimes I add stuff like this to a ‘do later’ list with a tag with an underscore in front of it or something like that. Then they sit in my tags for when I can be bothered.

You’re the prevailing expert so far so I would go for it. People can always vote against or make further edits later. Nice edit notes and disambiguations etc are more important than getting it perfect first time :slight_smile:

I would add those details about the source into the notes. Makes it clearer for other owners of the release of the sources of the recordings.

With a mixed bootleg like that it can be tricky to link to other recordings. If “Dave” has done any work on editing \ trimming \ cleaning up those recordings then they become new recordings in MB eyes anyway. I’d just set new recordings if there is any doubt.

As to the Disambiguation comments. Have you started to use Scripts yet?

Set Recording Comments for scripts puts an “Edit Recording Comments” button onto the Release page letting you bulk edit an album’s worth of Disambiguation comments in a few clicks. Massive time saver for gigs like that.

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Yes I run the “MusicBrainz: Set recording comments for a release” script. I did do the edit after all and it looks like this Paul McCartney but you can see my edits for the disambiguations. I eventually set them all to “live” then from referencing the original fansite.added certain known dates/locations. And yes I do think (after reading a lot of text) “Dave” has altered some of these like fade in and fade out plus mastering of course.

The recordings are actually tons better than any official release I have by the way so he does a good job of it. The main reason I asked here first is because every time I add a popular artist, someone always criticizes it no matter how carefully I do it, so hence asking first.

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The default state here among many editors is always “You are wrong, I am right”. So you are never going to win, even if you try and start a conversation. :smiley: Too many different flavours of OCD. :crazy_face: And the guidelines can be fairly vague.

The rules certainly changes between different artists. So I try and stay consistent to the style used with that artist.

I edit a lot of Pink Floyd and get a bit confused as to when I can merge bootlegs and when not to. Especially as there you get a lot of bootlegs of bootlegs. The general rule I follow is a few seconds of fade in \ fade out is the same recording. But if the “Dave” has made a good few edits to clean the track up, or merged two into one, then it is a new recording. I try and add locations and dates now too.

Don’t let your notes get lost in the edits. Add those details into the annotation for all to see. The source notes are what make this release different. I’d also get that link in somewhere

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