Thinking of film music, I tend to think about 2 things. Film Title and Composer. Performong artist, be it Orchestra or conductor or the synth guy, are secondary and I would like them credited on the relationship tab.
So this does follow the CSG, but only because what info is important to identify the recording first.
Title Jaws, composer John Williams and a list of recording artists.
I would never look for
Title Footprints, composer Wayne Shorter , artist Joshua Redman, instead I would look for Foorprints, Joshua Redman. And this I think can be extended to other genre that do not value Composer as much as Classical and Soundtrack does.
I would like to think that CSG, not because Soundtracks are or are not Classical music, should follow Classical style where the Composer is prominent.
I am literally devastated by this all. I have spent months and many hours on trying to fix problems, and getting voted along the way. Looking at John Barry or Ennio Morricone’s pages I understood we should be able to see their work in their discographies. Especially as people like Barry have plenty of albums outside of his film work.
I have avoided editing Classical music because I don’t really listen to it and realise there are very different rules for it. But I was working on film music because it was not classical. And continued due to the votes and discussions I was having. Knowing I was doing a good job of clearing up many borken recording credits, and what I also believed was mis-credited albums
An album like this:
Is clearly titled “The Best of John Barry” and the performer is clearly noted as “The City of Prague Philharmonic”. It is also sold in the stores like this.
Reading every guideline I could, and that Wikipedia page, plus many other sources I could not see the description “an orchestra makes any music classical”. This is a very different interpretation. Especially strange if the soundtrack itself is not classical, but the second person to perform it then becomes classical and changes all the credits. That seems back to front.
I agree that the interface is very confusing. If the moment someone pulls out a bad synth and does a cover of some music means they now can get into the composers discography, that seems wrong to me. It makes it impossible to ask the database “What is Vangelis’ discography?” I thought this was part of the point of this database? I don’t understand why we are not supposed to show the difference between the real Soundtracks of Ennio Morricone and some guy doing some covers. The composers are all clearly linked in the Works and seems a strange twist to add that into a Performer field on non classical music.
Surely there must be a better way the interface could show this for film music so we can still see the discography of John Barry in a trusted way? Enforcing CSG for film music means you can’t see the discography’s of these guys who conduct the music they write.
I agree with you and part of the reason for my edits was also connected with this. When I think of original film music, as I heard in the film, I agree that I think of the original composer. And that is what I was doing following the soundtrack guideline.
But what I also want to know is I am really listening to the original soundtrack as created by that composer, and not someone else’s interpretation of it. Something categorised by MB as NOT a soundtrack, so I understood this was to be credited as “normal”. Using CSG on everyone who calls themselves an orchestra doing covers makes it almost impossible to find Ennio Morricone’s own music. It seems to break the point of a database’s beauty of being able to ask it questions about the data.
I looked at John Barry and I could not tell his original music apart from covers and re-recordings. It was all a tangled mess. That didn’t seem right.
Bottom line is CSG can only truely co-exist on MB if there’s a clear and unequivocal line between classical and non-classical, and I don’t think that’s the case.
I assume people want to look at a classical composer’s page and see the releases of their works, and under the normal operation of MB, that page would be empty. So it’s been decided to shoe-horn the composer into the release/group credits to get around that.
Would it not be more effective to have a “composer credit” field on releases and groups that works in the same way as the artist credit, and have some artist pages use that to generate the list of RGs rather than subverting the artist credit field?
It’s really more like “release credits are meant to be whoever is credited, and in all of these releases the composer is prominently credited” - a classical release where the composer is not printed does not get listed under the composer, even if it’s all by one same composer That’s why I’m not really sure why this is surprising - it’s not a classical style idea that the credited artists are put on the credit, whether they are performers, DJs, composers or compilers. Classical mostly just specifies what separators to use
I’ll add that, when you think about it, “Artist” is not very specific. IIUC, the Artist zone in MB comes from the ARTIST MP3 tag. Composers, performers, and why not sound engineers are artists in the general sense. I am not exaggerating, I remember of a specific release which was made of recordings made by André Charlin. For classical, the artist is whoever the publisher picked. Actually, this is probably the same as for other musics, but in other musics, the publisher almost always chooses the performer.
As a classical music lover, I always think of composer + performer(s). I hate it when a classical music release does not mention one of those, and I am very happy that MB allows me to fill the holes. And I don’t think about the Artist anymore, I fill it according the MB rules but I don’t use it.
You do have an interesting point of view and it is different from the Classical mindset which is shaped by the concept of a Composer.
At the same time, what is a cover if not an intepretation of a composition, even if it ts played by that synth guy. Ennio Morricione composed fantastic music, performed it by himself and other will perform it as well. This is a common example of modern composers like him or John Williams for example.
If you credit Morricione music on release as
Morricione;
Some Orchestra,
Morricione
Then credits are visible on a page. On track you would say Composer and add performong artists on Rels.
For the synth guy
Morricione;
Synth Orchestra
And in rels the Synth Orchestra name and perhpas the real guy name. Its common to add an ensmble, for example Tokyo Strong Quartet and the individual performers as instruments.
If you open artist page for Artist Morricione, it will list all the releases , if self performed or not. In my mind, this is a complete picture of Morricione discography.
I don’t see I said it was surprising. What I’m saying is that by having two separate sets of rules, it puts pressure on releases to be defined as either classical or not-classical, which is not always how things are…
Like when someone re-credited a Queen recording to “Freddy Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor & John Deacon” because it was on a primarily classical release.
Sure, some people might take things to the extreme (of course, maybe that’s what the release said! but I doubt it). My point was just I don’t see how it’s (generally) shoehorning, unless you mean the music industry shoehorns the composer on the cover for classical!
By shoe-horn, I mean take a field and jam more information in it that was originally envisioned. One of the things I like about MB is that we’ve tried to avoid overloading the title of recordings with too much other info - moving featured artists out of it for example.
And, looking through, eg Handel’s page I don’t see how this is being applied consistently or with much thought to keeping it updated.
(I do like we have a live 1888 release on wax cylinder though)
And as we don’t generally add “non-performing” credits from the cover for other genres, it seems wrong to do it for classical specifically.
But I think it would be interesting if those sort of releases could be surfaced in the pages of the artists to whom they refer. I don’t see putting their credits in the releases as a good way to do it though.
(oh, and the person who did the Queen edit did it because they thought that’s how all classical releases were done)
Nobody has said that, as far as I can recall. There are many forms of classical that don’t involve an orchestra. Solo concertos, string quartets, etc. “Film score” and “soundtrack” are simply new forms of classical, as I pointed out earlier.
For the soundtracks where Barry composed and conducted, won’t those release groups be segregated as “album + soundtrack,” while releases where someone else performs his music will be under “album?”
The inability to find “John Barry’s discography” isn’t a reason for improperly tagging the music. Maybe it means the search tools need improvement.
This feels somewhat similar to the motivation behind the “Crediting a remix album” thread. My interpretation is that @IvanDobsky’s (and maybe also @chiark’s) concern comes down to (quoting the new Remixes and mashups guidelines) a “release that was created without any participation from the credited artist” being credited to the composer.
I share this concern. I don’t know if it’d even be possible to fix this in the UI without schema changes, but it feels weird to me that the release groups listed first for Howard Shore are a bunch of re-recordings that he doesn’t even list in his official discography at howardshore.com » Discography/Filmography.
This. I think the question is not binary. Soundtrack is such a big word that it can effectively encompass any genre of music. And Classical, too, can have a range of definitions.
So a particular type of Soundtrack or film music should be considered Classical if you believe there can be “modern” Classical music, and should not be considered if you believe Classicial only applies to a specifc period in the past, and any music has to earn that status after a certain amount of time.
(However even in the first more broad definition of Classical, orchestration alone is not sufficient.)
This is a big part of the problem I see. I thought the artist’s page was for locating their discography. John Barry did a lot of pop music before the film scores. A lot of his albums and singles should appear in that “albums” and “singles” section. By listing any recording that mentions someone’s name on a cover then you can’t find his discography any more.
If versions of Beatles tunes performed by orchestras are now to appear on the Beatles’ page then again MB stops being a database that can be referred to for a discography. If a guy with a synth performing Morricone appears on Morricone’s page alongside Morricone’s performance, then I assume any cover of Pink Floyd albums now also need to appear on their page due to the synths?
Yeah, I understand you want to tag your Beethoven with his name. And want to go to his artist page and see performances of his works. But this is a very different use to how the non-classical side of the database operates. It then gets very confusing for composers who are in the middle ground.
I also see some editors like @chiark do understand what I am trying to say. I just word things badly.
I notice some people have also missed that I am mainly concerned by covers. Soundtracks are well covered in the documentation and I totally agree with how they are credited as they should be easy to find on John Barry or Howard Shore’s pages. Especially as they usually also conduct those original performances. That means they clearly appear in their discography. It’s just we don’t stick bad covers of Beatles albums into the middle of their discography, so I don’t understand why Morricone’s data should suffer.
If you go to Wikipedia, or any music site, it will list John Barry’s performances in his discography. Ditto John Williams, Morricone, etc. You will not find any mention of The City of Prague Orchestra on that page. This is the detail I feel are being destroyed due to wanting to change how some music files are tagged.
This is indeed a heart of the matter. The concept of covers from non Composer music, although Beattles did compose of course, and Composer based music like Beethoven and Moricione that is interprated by multiple artist.
This is a personal view, but I do think that Film music, Film score, is a written down composition that Orchestra of Prague and others can interpret, and I would not call it a cover.
The question of discography is also interesting one. What is John Williams discography? Only when he performs or when he performs and/or his music is performed.
As far as other db go, they mostly got it wrong and that’s why we are here. And there are discography pages where every recording for a composer is listed, for example Bruckner.
And for tagging, I don’t need Prague Orchestra credited on Release page, don’t need a Composer either, as long as its credited on Rels thats good enough, so my arguments are not based on personal tagging needs.
There was another thread that an editor was all in arms why do we list a Composer as a Release and Track artist as Composer did not release anything really, performing artists did. I think there is a validity to this thinking and having work rels that do have a Composer attribute is enough for the release identification. But thid does not agree with album covers and how albums are marketed. So it seems that current CSG is an attempt at compromise.
As I corrected myself in an earlier post in this thread, orchestral arrangements of pop music, like Beatles or Pink Floyd, belong in the “Classical Crossover” genre, and thus may not be subject to CSG.
(before you ask, here is a good explanation of that, by a magazine that is dedicated to it: What is Classical Crossover? – Classical Crossover Magazine)
But Morricone’s work, like John Williams, John Barry, and others, were written in forms that are clearly of the same nature – with (to borrow a phrase from that Classical Crossover magazine) “traditional classical elements” – as music that we all recognize as classical, no matter how difficult it is to define in words.
“Film score” and “soundtrack” (when it is based on those “traditional classical elements”) are, as I’ve already mentioned, new (100 years or so) genres of classical music, just like symphony, or opera, or concerto. When the release is the OST, soundtrack guidelines apply. When the composition is performed by someone else, CSG applies (unless it falls into “crossover”). As reosaravok noted, CSG and Soundtrack guidelines are very similar.
The CSG system does not allow for the fact that some artists are both orchestral and pop. It does not make sense the database puts these into the same table. No way to tell them apart. I get it that for normal classical composers you want to tag your files with the composer. This then breaks the database’s ability to show an artist’s discography.
I had started to work on John Barry’s discography when I first spotted this problem. It makes it pointless continuing that work if the database has no way to show his albums separate to an orchestra re-recording some of his film work appearing as part of his discography.
What if composer name is kept only on medium and removed from release and release group?
This way re-recorded albums won’t show up in the composer main page but only on their various artists release groups.
Could this be a good compromise for everyone?
Isn’t that the purpose of genre tags? Perhaps your need would be satisfied if a column for the genre tag were added to the table.
I agree that classical and non-classical are “different animals.”
“Discography,” in its traditional sense, isn’t just the collection of recordings by a particular performer or composer. That’s a relatively recent usage of the word. Traditionally, “discography” is just the cataloging of published sound recordings. The who, when, where, etc., are relevant details, but a discography isn’t necessarily restricted to a single artist.
Classical is a complex puzzle. Some albums are focused on the composer (“Mozart: The Complete Symphonies”), while others are focused on the ensemble and/or conductor, which may include works by several composers (“The Academy By Request”, Neville Marriner & Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields), and still others are focused on an individual soloist (Paul Goodwin, “Oboe & Oboe d’amore Concertos”). I’ve played with a few music organization tools, and it seems like none of them have come up with a solution that solves the puzzle.
I’ve been having similar discussions in the Plex forums, trying to get them to acknowledge composers on the same level as pop artists. Maybe it would make more sense to have a separate database for classical. I’ve certainly separated them that way on my Plex server.
That’s why I’m not really sure why this is surprising - it’s not a classical style idea that the credited artists are put on the credit, whether they are performers, DJs, composers or compilers. Classical mostly just specifies what separators to use 
