Beginner here (and in Picard) trying to go through my CD collection which I’ve recently ripped and trying to both correctly tag everything, but also have a lot of folk/traditional folk like CDs that currently do not exist in MB, so I want to get these into MB correctly. I am trying to do the “right” things, but am struggling with the intended to be very precise in meaning technical jargon and interpreting it correctly. So I am concluding as I read more that I have been doing things at best suboptimally or at worst incorrectly.
As a concrete example, here are the liner notes for the first track of “Home, Home on the Road” by Bryan Bowers:
FLOWERS OF EDINBURGH
[1:41] Bryan Bowers Autoharp; Sam Bush, Mandolin. Produced by Ken Bloom and Bryan Bowers, Acme Recording Studios, Chicago, Ill., Michael Rasfeld, Engineer. Arr. by Bryan Bowers; published by Seattle Sounds, ASCAP.
I edited the track artist name to use the pop up window to add autoharp to Bryan Bowers, a join character of “;” and added the artist Sam Bush and mandolin so it ending up looking as
But now I’m coming to believe I should have added “relationships”, which I do not think I fully comprehend yet.
How should I have placed the information in this liner note?
BTW, it occurs to me that a great "how to " doc would be to take an actual CD with its existing liner notes, and show, step by step, how all of that information should be inserted properly into MB. I’ve looked around in the existing MB docs, but if one of these is in there, I haven’t found it yet. I’ll probably search more broadly online a bit later for such a tutorial. Surely someone has done such by now?!? [Edit: I mean a non-video tutorial. I can read and absorb information much faster than watching a video.]
It doesn’t look your cup of tea, but there’s a video tutorial about how to use relationships → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koaa7vsTCFo
(a bit old, it still uses the old relationships editor, @aerozol perhaps something to update…)
Yes, definitively. Infos like who’s playing what are clearly relationships. It can be tricky to determine the correct level of relationships sometimes.
Please when asking for help, link to the actual release you’re working on so we can have a look directly.
To add a relationship, click on the track title and then Edit and then under Relationships, click Add Relationship. and then select instrument for the relationship type and enter your artist and select the instrument and then Done if this looks good.
I’ve had to adjust your release date, before it ends up in the naughty report (Releases released too early - MusicBrainz) - please take heed to the caution/warning messages that appear, you can see on the track list editor that entering 1980 and selecting CD as a format is discouraged.
Other notes:
Annotation, go to Edit Relationships, you can add the photographers in there as proper relationships, use the Task free text field to set who did what (front cover/back cover).
I wouldn’t bother putting in the address of the record label on the release, if you think its important add it to the annotation of the label entity instead.
I’m going to vote Abstain on Edit #122361674 - MusicBrainz - please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’ll only get reversed later down the line as your edit doesn’t follow the style guides we use here.
I’m not familiar with this record but I have found its match on Discogs, these additional “artists” you have linked are marked as guest performers, you can use the “Performer” relationship (again this is done via the Relationship Editor screen) and then tick Guest if you think it is applicable.
You are trying to use ANV (artist name variation/“credited as”) incorrectly, we wouldn’t normally have it read “Bryan Bowers, Vocal and Autoharp” - the artist is Bryan Bowers, if you want to specify what Bryan did on the recording use the relationship editor, select Instruments and then fill out the form that pops up.
Getting to know the style of Musicbrainz can take a little while, but there are plenty of editors who will be happy to guide you. Our style is somewhat similar in some respects to Discogs if ever you contributed over there.
Our documentation can be patchy, just let us know what doesn’t make sense or needs clarity and we can get it adjusted as necessary.
The message did say this was a preexisting problem. There actually was a release entry for this album, which I attempted to edit. But it does say “1980” on the CD’s liner notes. However, it escaped my notice that on the physical CD itself it has “1996”. I missed that, but saw it on the magnified image you linked to in your follow-up post. Should I have just removed the previously entered year (1980), which obviously must be incorrect? Of course, now I know the presumably correct year, 1996.
Thank you very much for this! I will later today try to parse out what you did and apply it throughout. Now my concern is that I will inadvertently create a huge edit mess trail…
Yep that’s the entry for the original 12" Vinyl LP release, which did indeed come out in 1980.
Many things can dictate needing a new release entity, different formats is one of the most common.
You should always try and have the Release Date be as close to the actual release date of the medium you’re entering, sometimes this isn’t very easy to establish and so some editors may revert to using things like the latest Copyright date or Phonographic date printed on the release - which is OK but not a sure fire way of confirming the release. Ultimately if you were really unsure on the date you are more than welcome to leave that field blank, it is not a required field to create the entry.
As you progress you’ll get a sixth-sense almost when working out if a date printed either on the release, or referenced elsewhere (such as another database/marketplace) is genuine or not.
To help us control this field’s validity, the form will reference the date in which the format selected was introduced to the date entered on the first page (in this case CD’s after 1982 are generally accepted). A lot of the entries in that naughty report are historic bad data that editors are slowly unravelling.
Shouldn’t be a problem you’ve got the eyes of many autoeditors now on this who are all equipped to help newcomers like yourself, as maybe if you stick around and continue to do a good job you could gain that status yourself.
If you’re ever unsure my suggestion is to just make a single edit, and then either return here to the forums to ask or make a post in this long-thread:
I see you added the “recorded at” relationship with the value from the liner notes “Acme Recording Studios”, but you added a parenthetical note “(Mike Rasfeld’s studios in Chicago)”. Where did you find this additional information? If it’s in the discog linked reference or the liner notes or the CD I’m missing it.
You added a related work relationship. Did you do an online search for the associated information (other than the publisher, which is in the liner notes) or was this work already in MB?
The recording relationship information is in the booklet. Since there are several locations and engineers I added these in for tracks 4,8,13 since there are several Bias locations. The booklet is not exactly easy to decipher the information from, even the ones I added I had to spend time looking at the information. Feel free to ask questions. I also voted no to the track level artist credits because they belong on recording. If you look at the bottom right of the release page you will see “open edits” and “editing history” that you can click on. The booklet art I am working from is Home, Home On The Road : Bryan Bowers : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive .
Look at “place” Acme Recording Studios - MusicBrainz the information in the parentheses is a “disambiguation” added to supply extra information about that place.
For “producer” the “Related type” is “Artist”. Why wouldn’t this be, instead, “Recording”? What is the key element that makes it obvious that the related type should be “artist”?
I also note that you somehow are able to get “Chicago, Illinois, United States” to show up. I clicked on the pencil icon to see what you did for this line and duplicated the same thing, but my entry for recording 2 does not display “Chicago, Illinois, United States”. Obviously I’m missing something, but what?
I noticed that the official MB entry for this engineer, Michael Rasfeld, misspelled his last name as “Rasfield”. I submitted an edit to correct this. The links already present on this entry show the correct spelling on the pages linked. I also did an online search for his obituary which also confirms the “Rasfeld” spelling. And this is how his name is spelled in the liner notes of the Bryan Bowers CD I am working on.
OK, I’ve (mostly) completed the relationship edits for recording 2, “Berkeley Woman”. As I mentioned earlier I edited the engineer’s entry (Michael Rasfeld) to correct a misspelling of his last name. Because, I guess, this edit has to be approved before I can make use of it for my editing of this CD, I have not added it yet to the second recording.
Also, the publisher for this second recording is listed as “Cherry Hill Music, ASCAP”, which did not exist in the MB db. I entered this but noticed it was not showing up like the model recording 1 edits, so I went back and corrected it to come out the same way. Again, it seems I can’t make use of this corrected form in the related work entry until it gets approved, so it is not entered yet.
I’ve also added Bryan Bowers’ autoharp and vocal credits for the other recordings, but am not otherwise finished with them.
If someone could look over and critique what I’ve done so far I would be appreciative! Thanks!
FLOWERS OF EDINBURGH
[1:41]
Bryan Bowers Autoharp;
Sam Bush Mandolin. Produced by Ken Bloom and Bryan Bowers, Acme Recording Studios, Chicago, Ill.,
Michael Rasfeld, Engineer.
Arr. by Bryan Bowers;
Published by Seattle Sounds, ASCAP.
Does it mean the album was produced at this studio, or was it recorded here?
Cherry Hill Music - MusicBrainz - you added this and it is available now to use. If nothing is added to it within a week it automatically disappears. So use it now.
There may have been an initial delay between when you added it and when it appears in the drop down list. Any time you get a delay you can copy either the whole URL from that new label page. Or just the numbers and letters bits and paste it into the box and it will find and select it.
If you corrected the spelling of Rasfeld you can use that now and the new spelling will appear in a few days. Sometimes you do get releases for guys like this with alternate spellings, that is why you see the “Credited As” box under a person’s name when adding a relationship.
Seeing “Chicago” is a automatic GUI thing. You select the short form, and this is what you see when editing the Relationship page. But when you then look at the Release page it will be in extended form. Same happens with recording studios, etc.
The object here is a person. A “Producer” is an “Artist”. The act they do is “Produce”.
Same way as “Bryan” is a “Vocalist”. A person does something.
Sometimes credits will refer to “Additional Production” or “Additional Vocals”
It allows you to show how it actually written on a cover. For example a “guitar” could be “lead guitar” or “violin” a “first violin”. Also the example above when an alternate spelling of someone’s name is used.
When that thing happened. For example if they recorded over a couple of days you can put 1990-08-02 to 1990-08-04. If it happened on one day then you put both start and end dates the same.
Less of use here. More useful on a page where something happened over a long time and we don’t know when it stopped. For example Bob left the band but no idea when.
Dates will also allow just a year (1990). Or Month (1990-08)
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Note when you are filling in that relationship dialog, ticking the boxes, etc. Look down next to the Cancel/Done buttons and you’ll see a Preview of exactly what is about to appear on screen from your edit. A handy way to test what some of the above would do.
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You have picked some of the best kind of releases to do first. Something with a booklet. And only a few versions of the release. As it is a small artist no one will shout at you if you take ages to get things right. Or if you make mistakes. I find you learn more by mistakes.
I read that as Produced => created => Recorded. So it was “Recorded At” Acme. Ken and Bryan were the Producers at the time.
If they were saying it was recorded in pieces elsewhere and they brought the tapes back to Acme to “produce a result”, then you’d have a “Mixed” credit.
