as I’m getting more familiar with MusicBrainz, I started adding further relationships to recordings and releases. But I’m often not sure what the correct relationship type for engineers or producers listed in the booklet of a release is. In particuar, Deutsche Grammophon releases often credit a “Recording Producer”. Is that the person who recorded the audio (“recorded by”), or is it a “producer” in MusicBrainz terminology. Or neither of both? And what to do with “Tonmeister/Balance Engineer”; the relationship style guidelines suggest using the generic “engineer” type, but there is also “balance engineer” as a relationship type now …
The bit about Tonmeister/Balance Engineer in the guideline you link to is weird. As you point out, there is a relationship type for just that, and there it says:
Balance engineers typically have additional music engineering experience specific to the extra demands of classical music.
This relationship should also be used for Tonmeister credits.
This relationship type should only be used if the engineering credit
specifies a balance engineer role. In case of conflicting engineering
types (for example “Tonmeister / Recording Engineer / Ingénieur du son /
Ingegnere del suono”), use just “engineer”.
The relationship style guideline is probably just out of date, but it would be interesting to hear more from people more involved in style issues.
I would probably just use producer for recording producer. I’ve edited a lot of Deutsche Grammophon releases in the past, but I can’t remember what I’d chosen then. I wouldn’t be surprised if I alternated between producer and recorded by in the past, because it’s such an edge case.
The way DG displays the recording producer suggests they mean a producer rather than an engineer. I don’t know what the recording producer specifically does. I sent them a mail, maybe I’ll get an answer, and then we can think about what to do with recording producers.
The example used in the relationship guidelines doesn’t seem outdated to me. Note (emphasis mine):
In case of conflicting engineering types (for example “Tonmeister / Recording Engineer / Ingénieur du son / Ingegnere del suono”), use just “engineer”.
That one basically translates to having a credit of “Balance Engineer (German) / Recording Engineer (English) / Sound Engineer (French?) / Sound Engineer (Italian?)”. From such a mixed bag of titles for a single role, the guidelines says to stick to the safe bet and simply credit as “engineer” rather than guessing at which of the four languages has the “more correct” specific engineering role.
Engineer: prefer Audio Engineer, Editor, Mastering Engineer,
Mix Engineer, Recording Engineer, Sound Engineer and/or Programmer. If the Engineer type is either Balance Engineer or Tonmeister, the generic Engineer type should be used, and not one of the more specific Engineer types.
There’s no word about conflicting types in that part.
Yes. Tonmeister is just the German word for Balance Engineer, so that’s no confusion. The highlighted text in Mellthas’ quote is also what I refer to in the ticket.
