I still added this artist but got the default warning, that artist without any relationships will be deleted. So I added it with “miscellaneous support relationship”:
But it would be nice to have relationships to show this info built-in in MB DB in a structured way. Instrument making is an important concept and theme in musical world.
So I propose we need to have a bunch of new relationships related to that:
type
name
inverted name
description
artist-artist
made an instrument[instrument_name] for artist [x]
has/had an instrument[instrument_name] made by artist [y] specially for artist [x]
used to show owning of instrument that is made by some artist for other artist
artist-artist
artist [x] has/had an instrument(s) made by artist [y]
instrument(s) made by artist [y] is owned by artist [x]
used to show owning of instrument that is made by some artist, but is not specially for that artist
artist-release, artist-recording
provided an instrument(s) for release/recording
release [x] used instruments provided by artist [y]
used to show instruments were provided by some artist for making a recording/release (note: ‘provided’ means direct instrument maker’s decision)
artist-release, artist-recording
instruments of artist [x] were used for performing of release/recording [y]
instruments of artist [x] were used for performing of release/recording [y]
used to show instruments of some artist were used for making a recording/release, but doesn’t mean the instrument maker has made decision about that
Hi Libra. Not sure how quickly it’ll get done either way, the devs and admins around here are pretty damn swamped most of the time, but I’d recommend putting in a feature request over on tickets.metabrainz.org.
It’s an awesome idea. And hell, it could be something super easy to implement and so get done quickly. Idk, not my wheelhouse.
I agree, this would be a good idea. It’s fairly common that releases of organ music will specify the maker/history of the organ used in the performance.
“Manufacture” generally applies to a process of turning out multiple units, like an assembly line or machine output. In many cases, especially with things like pipe organs, it may be a one-off construction.
I guess there are two kinds of things here: one is specific instruments (organs, or valuable old violins, etc.) where ideally it would make sense to track the instrument itself (but that is quite a lot of work to implement since we do not have at all a layer for individual instruments). And the other is more general “brand or maker made instrument X used here”, which would be technically a lot easier to implement (although it could feel a bit like data duplication because of how we do relationships).
I’m a bit skeptical about an “artist/label(for company) made an instrument [instrument_name] for artist” because that actually doesn’t cover a lot of the most significant instrument making relationships (Stradivari’s violins weren’t made for any of the people using them now, and yet people would want to store that information).
I think the easiest starting point for something like this would be the release/recording version. “X made instrument Y used in release/recording Z” where the specific instrument name/identification/code (for one-off instruments) can be set as the instrument alias. I tested it on test.musicbrainz.org:
Obviously the best way to do this would be to have a three or four point relationship so all the info “Janine Jansen played a violin (the Barrère made by Antonio Stradivari) in 2010” would be one relationship. But that’s even harder than tracking individual instruments, so…
Would this seem useful as it is? If it feels weird to have the instrument name / title as the alias it could potentially also be made a separate attribute like the “task” one shown in the first post here, I guess.
A couple of times I have stumbled upon MB recordings having an organ set as “recorded at [place]”, but of course there are other instruments mobile enough (if not nominally):
… and a more serious contribution to the discussion of this thread.
Indeed, currently, it seems that even though there is a relationship for an instrument technician as an artist we have no way of properly crediting an instrument maker, be it Schnichter, Stradivari, Bluthner or Fender. I would certainly support adding instrument maker as an artist category.
And crediting just the instrument maker should be much simpler than some of the other proposals in this thread.
What do people think about crediting labels as instrument maker, to track the brand of an instrument? E.g. piano made by Bösendorfer or guitar made by Fender.
Not sure how much it matters, but there are also instruments made out of other instruments, like the tromboon. Would the relationship capture only the person/company who assembled the final tromboon, or also the companies that made the original trombone and bassoon?
