Classical, same/different releases.... cleaning up... yuk!

MusicBrainz
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Hi folks, I’m starting to find my feet around data cleanup and general platform usage thanks to a few of you I’ve interacted with via edits notes…

Now… I’ve come across a Classical release which seems completely different to what I expected, and I’m pretty confident this is the same recording.

Additionally the first (“Vol 1”, although not labeled as such) and Vol 2 seem to be documented very differently with regards to artists versus performing artists versus composers, etc. I’m reading through the style guide and I would appreciate a few pointers as to what is clearly wrong, and what is clearly right; so that I can attempt an update in a somewhat correct direction:

Harmonie Universelle: Release “Harmonie universelle” by Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Le Concert des Nations - MusicBrainz
(ref: https://www.discogs.com/release/2362041-Jordi-Savall-Montserrat-Figueras-Hespèrion-XXI-La-Capella-Reial-De-Catalunya-Le-Concert-Des-Nations)

See also

Harmonie Universelle (Vol 2): Release “Harmonie Universelle II (Portrait Alia Vox 2001-2004)” by Jordi Savall • Montserrat Figueras • Hespèrion XXI • La Capella Reial de Catalunya • Le Concert des Nations - MusicBrainz
(ref: https://www.discogs.com/release/2362158-Jordi-Savall-Montserrat-Figueras-Hespèrion-XXI-La-Capella-Reial-De-Catalunya-Le-Concert-Des-Nations)

Thanks,

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Initial notes… more specifically…

  1. artists should be the composers, not recording/performing artists?: Release “Harmonie Universelle II (Portrait Alia Vox 2001-2004)” by Jordi Savall • Montserrat Figueras • Hespèrion XXI • La Capella Reial de Catalunya • Le Concert des Nations - MusicBrainz

  2. cover art should be separated?: Release “Harmonie universelle” by Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Le Concert des Nations - Cover art - MusicBrainz

  3. track artist anonyme (eg track 1) versus anonymous (eg track 2) Release “Harmonie universelle” by Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Le Concert des Nations - MusicBrainz when track 2 was composed by Rhodes??

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Oof, these do look like a mess, especially vol. 2.

I don’t think it’s required to split the images, although having a split front probably makes sense - you’ll need to reorder it to the first position for it to take over as the main front image.

Using a credit for [anonymous] is fine, but then it should be consistent, and anything not actually anonymous as per the album credit should be changed.

Vol 2 needs a lot of changes including, yes, the track artists becoming the composers (and removing them from the track titles). The “AV9822” and whatnot codes seem to be the catalog numbers of the original albums from which the tracks were taken, and also don’t belong on the titles (but they could be put on the annotation, or even better, if we do have the albums already, the recordings could hopefully be merged).

Edit: I started some recording merges based on acoustids and catalog numbers for now.

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In this case, we got Rhodes credited. Sometimes it’s just a stylistic choice to keep the tracklist neat but sometimes the composer is unknown and only his last name has survived in an older autograph score. With releases having older music there is often this type of challenge. There’s no point in adding an artist with just the last name but if you know the full name then feel free to add/use it. Sometimes special-purpose artists like [anonymous] are the most suitable, see the guidelines for special-purpose artists.

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I disagree if we have a composition, we could have “Rhodes” with disambiguation “composed X” :slight_smile: That makes it a lot easier to improve further, compared with not having an entry at all.

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We could of course do that if we would know if that name in the parentheses is actually a last name. After some research, now I believe it’s actually a place.

But yes, there’s many situations when it would make sense to add the artist. I personally aren’t doing that with old music if after extensive research I’m not finding anything about the composer.

The recording having “Rhodes” is also (AcoustID) on release Release “Diáspora sefardí: Romances & Música instrumental” by Hespèrion XX - MusicBrainz . See paranthesis of the tracks.

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That is a fair point with old music, yeah, it can sometimes be a place or a book or something :slight_smile:

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Gents,

Thanks for your input. I’m not sure whether “here” is the right place to continue the discussion, however let me contribute a few thoughts;

@ListMyCDs.com says
“Sometimes it’s just a stylistic choice”

In that case, its pretty clear to me that the rules are not clear and the expected output will be different when contributed to by different individuals. What is the forum/approach/process for clarifying?

I’ve also had another experience recently (remember, I created an account early Nov, so I’m a complete noob at this) where a composer (Ludovico Einaudi) was deemed as “Classical” (hence following the Classical ‘styleguide’) but still listed as track artist because he may have overseen the recording (not musically contributed to, other than the composition itself), which is also causing confusion.

I’m also going to mention in passing this is not only Classical music – just see how many different ways we can “label” an artist… RÜFÜS DU SOL - MusicBrainz so that’s another “rule” that need clarified or discussed or firmed up if there’s any hope for mistakes to reduce (given the whack-a-mole topic seems to be going around :rofl:)

So as a noob, I’m really not clear as to who makes/maintains those rules, were are they being discussed (discord, discourse, wiki, etc). I am eager to contribute, however;

I’ve since had a crack at creating a few new classical albums and I must say that despite my patience and attention to details, it’s been… interesting to say the least!

A) it seems the user interface is catering fine for pop music and artists, however NOT catering at all for Classical music and recordings, unless you’re an absolute genius pro and understand everything about Classical musique. (I’m assuming like many open source project contributors do “what they can” to help)

B) As a product manager in my day-to-day life, I really don’t like pointing fingers at users for “making mistakes” trying to “figure their way around a software” to achieve the expected outcome… I’m not suggesting this is/isn’t the case here, and I would love to further discuss how simple changes could make huge differences in the quality of data collected. This includes the product and also it’s underlying technology (what is going on with that search??? :rofl:)

C) Quality control; I’m overall pretty impressed with the data collected so far (not su much when I see this project is about to turn 25yrs old!), so I can only raise my hat off to some key contributors and thank them for their time. I also feel there’s a lot of moving pieces and I’m not sure how cohesive they are all and whether they each have a unified vision/goal.

I have so many questions and comments that I could go on for a while here, sorry!

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Folks, my apologies – but let’s leave it at that.

I have been explained that n00b contributions are more time-wasting than anything else and as such will refrain from making further changes.

Happy holidays.

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Seems to be related to:
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/119345037

To the OP: Taking a break never hurts. If you ever want to come back, you are always welcome. If you do, it will be inevitable that you bang heads with other editors again in the future - it might be a friendly encounter, it might not be, it’s just the nature of working on a collaborative database where everybody invests a lot of themselves. There is always more stuff to edit :slight_smile:

p.s. if anyone else feels like this, I can strongly encourage you to join us on the chat/matrix/discord. When your only interactions with other editors are via notes (often critical ones) it can be a bummer! Meet some editing friends.

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