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View Full Version : Proposed enhancements: Composer & Artist



peterD
03-28-2005, 01:24 AM
I am a new user, so may be missing things....

Consider CDs with recitals by a single artist of pieces by multiple composers. I want to be able to sort CDs by artist. This works fine now. I want to see artists with last name first, which I can get with the Properties->Swap option. So far so good.

Composer enhancements:

1) I want a properties->swap option for composer, but this does not seem possible. Am I missing something? I definitely want to keep composer and artist separate. I have tried entering them with lastname, first name format, but that seems a bad plan.

2) I can currently choose a composer and see all the CDs with tracks by that composer. I can NOT see a list of tracks though. I would like to both
a) choose a composer, see a list of track titles for that composer, then open the title of interest to see a list of the CDs containing a matching track.
b) choose a track title, with a list of composers with pieces of that title, then open the composer of interest to see a list of CDs containing a matching track.

3) Sometimes a track title on one CD will be something like "Concerto Elegiaco: Tranquillo". On another CD by a different artist, the same piece by the same composer may be listed as "Concerto No. 3: Tranquilo". I would like the option to view the list of all track titles for a given composer, select a group of them (like the two above), and update them all simultaneously to a single, complete description like "Concerto No. 3 (Elegiaco): Tranquillo."

4) Composers in general seem to be afterthoughts, I can't export them, they don't even appear on the default theme. The "crisp" Theme allows me to at least see the composers, but the font is too small to be legible and most of the screen appears to be used up by an album cover picture (which I don't care about) and white space. I would like the ability to print a very dense listing suitable for checking against when away from my computer.

5) Support for individual scores and books with collections of music would be good in the formats section. It would be nice to be able to filter to see pieces for which I which have both scores and recordings.

Artist enhancement:

There are artists who have released CDs separately and together as a duet. It would be nice to list duet albums by them against both their names, ie. to have multiple artists for an album. Putting both names into the artist field is not ideal; it creates a new "joint" artist that will only be close to one of them in an alphabetical sort.

Rob
03-31-2005, 05:26 PM
Most of my collection consists of Motion Picture soundtracks and classical music. The focus is on the composer first, then the artist. It would be nice to have a composer dialog box similar to the new artist dialog box.

It is nice to see the new classical view, but I'm still not sure how this will be expanded upon until all the new code is available. Until then, I am still uncertain as to who the artist is. Is it the composer, the conductor, the orchestra, or perhaps the soloist?