Soundtracks \ compilations - understanding types

A composer like John Barry is known for his movie soundtracks.

Often an album is recorded and released with a film. This is then obvious that it is an “Album + Soundtrack”.

And if two of these albums are combined and reissued on CD - “Album + Soundtrack + Compilation”.

Question 1: when multiple previously recorded tracks from older soundtracks are put together, is this just “Album + Compilation” or is the “Soundtrack” also ticked as they all came from film? I assume we only tick Soundtrack when it is a full film on the Release? Not for Greatest Hits collections.

Question 2: There are examples like this where a 9 track film sound track is padded out to two CDs with 15 extra tracks. So “Album + Soundtrack + Compilation”?

Question 3a: Someone re-records a soundtrack, same music but now it is a reproduction. Not the original work. Is this a “Soundtrack”? Here is a good example. This is a conductor and orchestra performing something COMPOSSED by John Barry. Should this be ticked as “Soundtrack” even though this version never appeared on the film?

Question 3b: So why was the above listed under Barry’s name only as Artist? Surely the R and RG should be credited to the orchestra/conductor? Or is this under Classical Rules due to an Orchestra involved? I can’t see a definition of when Classical guidelines should be followed. Who is the artist here?

I don’t edit classical as it is too confusing. But these soundtracks seem to stray into that territory and I need a little bit of advice. Thanks :slight_smile:

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Q1: I would say this is “Album + Compilation,” but not “Soundtrack.” Another example.

Q2: The Zulu OST was conducted by Barry, while this one was conducted by Nic Raine. It also includes Barry compositions from several other soundtracks. So this should not be marked as “Soundtrack,” for the same reasons as Q1 and Q3a.

Q3a: If they aren’t the recordings that were in the movie, I say “Not a soundtrack.” I suppose there must be exceptions to that, like where the release is marked as “Soundtrack,” but includes additional music that wasn’t actually in the movie.

Q3b: I follow CSG if the music is entirely (or predominantly, such as “Lord of the Rings”) orchestral. Last year I edited the example release in Q3a to credit the album per CSG, but I neglected to apply it to the RG. Voted for your edit.

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Brill. Thanks @Beckfield. These are the replies I expected so I can continue the mission of a little bit of a tidy up.

I didn’t catch that the Zulu example was yet another Nic Raine copy. I’m going to be watching out for him a bit more after spotting his Walkabout one. He seems to like the “Album + Compilation” tags of making a copy of something and then tagging in some extra Barry tracks. I guess that gets him on the Barry shelf in the shops.

Yuk - that Zulu release is confusing. Is that ALL Nic Raine? Is that the same on his Walkabout - so he does ALL of these tracks with the Prague Philharmonic? I thought that as some AcoustIDs were linking elsewhere then it was half Raine, and half Barry filler.

Albums like that are dodgy. Are they even compilations then? If this is all Nic Raine “new recordings”. Artwork makes it a little hard to work out, but now I notice the lack of any mention of Barry conducting any of it.

So really these should have Release, Release Group set to John Barry; City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Nic Raine ? And tracklist\recording performers are City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, Nic Raine

(I think I have accidentally entered another one of those rabbit holes…)

I had never heard of Raine before looking into this. I only noticed it because I looked at Discogs for the release you mentioned and saw it on the artwork. His bio on AllMusic says he orchestrated many of Barry’s soundtracks, so he has a connection to the music, anyway.

I’d say probably not a compilation, if everything was recorded for the release in question. This looks to be the case for the Zulu release.

Correct on the Release/RG artist, but, per the CSG, track artist should just be the composer, John Barry.

I think Raine has re-done a lot of these when you look at things like this: https://ia601406.us.archive.org/26/items/mbid-3a1be35c-4ac8-46ce-8f41-84ffcba8ca16/mbid-3a1be35c-4ac8-46ce-8f41-84ffcba8ca16-33476267386.jpg

As I am a big fan of the classic film Walkabout I was looking into the soundtrack. Which is when I spotted the first Raine re-recording as the original had been “lost” for so long.

I now wonder about these CDs. Seems as if they are all Prague Philharmonic tracks… I got some reading to do.

Sorry, but that just does not make sense here. Barry didn’t do everything with an orchestra. Most of his stuff will not really fit into CSG. This is a good example: Release group “The Bee’s Knees (The EMI Years 1957-1964)” by John Barry - MusicBrainz You see on the track lists there a huge range of groups being used. Mostly smaller groups. Not orchestral at all for many of those pieces, so CSG would not apply.

And yet with the Raine re-recordings we have tracks being re-done by an orchestra and therefore crossing the line into CSG. A puzzle. The use of an orchestra by Raine is therefore removing the performer from the track list. How would I credit the Recordings on these? I assume I can note the orchestra\conductor on the recording credit? (Sorry, I get really confused with “classical” credits. And been scarred from being shouted at last time…)

My main concern is to make sure the recordings are clearly separable from each other. Raine re-recordings clearly standing different from originals.

Following some AcoustIDs lead me to this: https://musicbrainz.org/release/1c64fb9a-e7df-4f0a-92e4-eef866cc3670 And it is clear that ALL of the music on these CDs are therefore re-recorded. I guess Raine wanted to increase some of his earnings from the work. :smiley:

I understand relationships at Recording level, so can’t get them wrong adding Orchestra and Conductor credits. But I am sure this will lead to other mis-linked recordings so got some lines to chase.

So for these Raine recordings, so I understand CSG correctly:

Release and Release Group: John Barry; Prague Philharmonic, Nic Raine
Tracklist: John Barry
Recordings: Prague Philharmonic, Nic Raine

And then I can add relationships to name the roles when I see them credited.

Is that correct?

Sorry - the more I look at this, the less sense it makes. “Classical” does not mean “performed by orchestra”. Can someone show me a definition for this? :thinking:

That is correct, as far as my understanding goes.

Classical music is certainly a puzzle, and it seems especially puzzling to those who try to make sense of it (myself included). :slight_smile: Among things like Plex, Emby, MusicBrainz, and who knows how many other groups trying to build an organizational structure of music, I have yet to find one that has solved the puzzle regarding classical music.

Even the metadata standards like ID3, etc., seem to have “something” missing, and it doesn’t help that pretty much every app I’ve found implements one tag incorrectly, according to the ID3 spec. The ID3 spec does not define a tag for “Album Artist.” WinAmp, one of the first really popular apps to implement support for ID3 metadata, apparently noticed this, and decided to use TPE2 (ID3 defines this as “Band/orchestra/accompaniment”) for Album Artist, and since 1997, it seems like everyone in the freaking world just followed suit.

That misuse of TPE2 has gone on so long that it is pretty much a de facto change to the ID3 specification. Problem is, that tag should have been the place where you’d put “Prague Philharmonic.” So now we don’t have a proper tag for that function, and that, I believe, is the root cause of the classical mess we find ourselves puzzling over.

As for “defining” classical music, I’m certainly no expert, but Wikipedia has a pretty good write-up on it. I would follow the link in the first sentence of that article entitled “formal musical tradition.”

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I had been reading that just before posting that questions. I gave up on that Wiki waffle. It kept repeating itself and was way too wordy. What I did come to feel there is that these Release are not classical. Nothing in the Wikipedia page says “using an orchestra means classical”. It talked of styles (that I did not understand) but didn’t seem to say that any music performed by an orchestra becomes classical. It did not seem to describe these recordings.

Much of this music was not written for an orchestra. Especially that large 40 years boxset. It has just been orchestrated by Nic Raine. As can be seen by looking at the EMI Years, much of this music was originally smaller groups.

The only time “classical” appears on the John Barry Wikipedia page is about his Mum. I don’t think CSG should be used here. These are film scores, not classical music.

(And the TPE2 history is interesting, thanks)

Maybe the 40-year set shouldn’t be tagged per the CSG, I don’t know, I’m not familiar with it. When I was talking about using the CSG, we were talking about the Zulu and Walkabout releases, where the orchestra and conductor are prominently credited, and the CSG pretty clearly applies, in my opinion. Just because most of Barry’s work is symphonic/orchestral/“classical” doesn’t mean it all is. Billy Joel and Frank Zappa both wrote music that fit the classical genre as well.

“Film score” could be considered just another form of classical, if it’s that type of music, like symphonies, tone poems, or concertos.

I have soundtracks in my classical library (Dances With Wolves, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) that follow CSG, and soundtracks in my popular music library (Stand By Me, Dirty Dancing, etc.) that don’t follow CSG. They go where they fit.

The puzzle is that the boxset includes tracks from those re-recorded soundtracks. It is all a mush and repackaging. Clearly there is a lot of this going on with Nic Raine. I am only just starting to open up the rabbit hole and trying to find the best guideline to follow.

It seems there are a lot of Barry works he re-recorded and these have been packaged into dozens of releases over the years.

It seems to me that as long as the Recordings can be correctly labelled, then this isn’t too weird. But even Zulu and Walkabout only have half those CDs as a single soundtrack, the rest is padded with a compilation of other tracks.

The 40-year set is especially strange. The Release and Release Group are currently labelled as John Barry due to being the only visible name on the box. And yet, inside, it is performed by this same orchestra.

I was looking at all the recordings last night and a lot of the case the tracks are labelled with the performer. In normal non-CSG style. Sometimes they are labelled as John Barry. Sometimes as both.

I am still confused by this. The guidelines are pretty confusing to me. They seem to talk about Classical music, not Orchestras. If classical music is performed on just a piano - then it follows CSG. I get that. Here we have non-classical music, 20th Century film soundtracks, performed by an orchestra.

It is also made more confusing here as Nic Raine is clearly trying to keep his name small but John Barry’s large as he knows Barry is the selling point.

A puzzle. :slight_smile:

Haha - wow… picture gets clearer. Silva Records have used the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to rerecord a whole TON of film scores. And not just with Nic Raine. Anything popular that will sell. There are so many recordings and reissued compilations it starts to get confusing where the original releases are! They most have hired those recording halls out for six months.

What is clear is this is repackaged a LOT. What it also is causing is a number of badly linked errors. Something I was worried was happening. I have found a few original Barry recordings incorrectly merged with these Raine reproductions.

It is also noticeable that most of they are not treated as CSG classical.

I’m on one of my chases now… making sure the Silva Records releases that can be traced to this orchestra at least have correct Relationships in place where it can be shown. And aiming to fix as many Recording credits as possible.

Now not everything on Silva Records is a re-recording, but likely a majority.