"Tribute" Bands and Beethoven

A recent post about the concept of "tribute" bands in On the Overgrown Path, one of my regular stops in my blog-reading rotation, cites to a recent article in The Guardian by Meurig Bowen:

who, although he keeps it a secret in the Guardian article actually manages a world famous Benjamin Britten tribute band himself - the Aldeburgh Festival.

I thought that was pretty funny.

The article itself is worth a read. I love early music and authentic performance, but I too have had my share of experiences with one-eyed lutenists and bass viol players who insist on dressing and smelling like the Renaissance. An excerpt:

Classical music's "period instrument movement" has covered as much ground as music history can throw at it. With a tool bag of gut strings, valveless trumpets, white-noised sopranos and investigative musicology, it has tracked backwards in time from its 18th-century starting point to simulate the music of medieval Parisian troubadours, and forwards to Elgar and Wagner as they might have sounded then. Short of rearing, by barbarous means, some castrati to recreate a night at the opera in Handel's London, where else can the search for musical "authenticity" go?

The answer lies not in brilliantly obscure PhDs about harpsichord string lengths in 18th-century Potsdam, or experiments with grain-fed oboists - but it is almost as kinky. It lies in the world of tribute bands.

Read the whole article...

iTunes and Classical Music Libraries

Introduction

Most classical music fans have massive CD libraries and want to fully take advantage of music management software. Without a consistent labeling system, it's impossible to find music quickly and accurately. Based on trial and error, I've developed the following "best practices" for my collection of 1000 + CDs.

I've converted my entire music collection as Apple Lossless files, which sit on a Buffalo TeraStation. The TeraStation is connected to an AirPort Express which streams the music over my wireless network and through my home stereo. The fidelity is outstanding.

Even if you don't go all-out and set up a system like mine, these considerations may help you if you are just starting a classical CD collection, or already have a large collection you want to transfer onto your iPod. They are all observations based largely on mistakes I've made.

There is also a more expensive way to do this, which is to purchase a Maestro. If money is no object, you can buy a base model for about $3,000 and have them rip and tag your CDs for you at $5/pop. They'll also scan in all of your libretti, which is a neat feature. However, my pocketbook doesn't allow it.

Software
I use iTunes because it's convenient for me to transfer files to and from my iPod, it's free, and it provides a sortable "composer" field. It also has a good built-in lossless encoder and allows me to sort my whole collection by composer so I can do a visual scan of all of my Respighi, or do a "search" for specific items by typing in the name of a conductor, composer, or ensemble.

iTunes Settings
There are several important changes you need to make from the default iTunes settings before you start encoding your CDs into a digital library.

1. Fidelity: Open iTunes, and select File, then Preferences. Select advanced. Change the import usingfield to Apple Lossless Encoder. Now close out of the dialog box.
   
   The Apple Lossless encoder generates significantly larger files than any other method, which should not matter if you have a large iPod (60 GB) and a reasonably big hard drive on your computer. When I decided to convert all of my files to Apple Lossless, I was more concerned with replacing my CD collection with near-exact replicas than I was jamming a ton of music on my iPod. Moreover, lots of quiet choral music or solo piano music sounds terrible using the iTunes default settings (as it does if you buy music direct from iTunes).
   
   These settings assume you are willing to sacrifice space for fidelity. I have a 60GB iPod, and it still is nearly impossible for me to fill it up with music I want to listen to.
   
   I also delete music from my iPod every few months, because I have about 300 GB of music and a 60GB iPod (do the math). Although everything doesn't fit, I am perfectly happy with several hundred CDs on my portable.
   
   
2. Viewing Fields in iTunes: Before you start ripping, you want to make certain "tag" fields visible, because iTunes has a nifty feature in which you can click at the top of a column, and sort fields alphabetically (like by composer, which is how my CD collection was organized). To do this, select Edit, then View Options, and make sure, at a minimum, Album, Artist, Composer, Genre, and Time are all displayed. This will enable you to see the fields you need when looking at your music library.
   

What's a Music Library?
The left hand navigation of iTunes has an icon for "Library." The iTunes library is simply a list of the music files you have on your computer. These files could be scattered across different folders on your PC, another networked laptop, or an external drive. The library is merely a listing of the "tags" of all of your music files. Therefore, if you want to delete a file permanently, you'll need to actually delete the file itself. Deleting it from the "library" in iTunes only deletes its entry in the list. The next time you reinstall iTunes or need to re-create your library, the actual file the library lists will still be there.

How to Tag Tracks
Pop a CD into your CD drive. You will notice that iTunes will look up the CD in its database and prepopulate the Composer name, Track Names, etc. with information someone else has already submitted to the iTunes database.

Here's the big problem: every person who has previously submitted track information, composer information, and title of the work has done it differently. Sometimes the spelling of performers, composers, or other pertinent information is completely inaccurate. Because the key to finding stuff in a massive CD collection rests on consistent labeling, here are the principles I use when "tagging" my own tracks. They are based on trial and error and are meant to optimize the searchability of your collection.

Naming Conventions / Tagging

1. General considerations: First, I always take out non-"American" characters in names of pieces and performers not because I am a xenophobe, but because it screws up searching for music. Although an accent aigu may be the correct letter to use in a Composer's name, it's impossible to type into the "search" box of iTunes and therefore when I search for that composer's name, no results will show up. Moreover, if you forget the accent grave at the end of Faurè on some of his works but not on others, you'll only get a partial list when you search the collection.
   
   The naming conventions also assume you use an iPod (they probably work on other MP3 players, but I have an iPod so I don't know). When you play music on your iPod, information appears on the display. This methodology also provides for the most relevant information while you're listening to or searching for music on your portable.
   
   
2. Name: The name field should always indicate the name of the piece and the name of the movement. The name field should also contain the Op. Number (or BWV, RV, L., D. or K. number). For consistency, I always use roman numerals to number movements.
   Example: String Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1: I. Introduzione. Andante espressivo - Allegro.
   I also will translate the name of the piece of music into English for consistency if it's a common word like Concerto (Konzert) or Quartet (Quartett).
   
   
3. Artist: For orchestral works I will list Conductor / Orchestra. For works with a soloist, I will list Soloist / Conductor / Orchestra using slashes. I always translate the name of the orchestra into English (Wiener Philharmoniker becomes Vienna Philharmonic) for consistency. If there isn't a common English translation, as is the case below, I keep it in the original language.
   Example: Christine Schafer / Pierre Boulez / Ensemble InterContemporain
   
   I don't need to list the fact that Christine Schafer is the soprano soloist, because I know that she is a soprano, not a tenor or a pianist.
   
   
   
4. Album: I list the album, in English, as it appears on the CD, without the composer's name.Example: Cantatas BWV 170, 54, 35
   
   
5. Grouping: I haven't found a good use for "Grouping" yet. Any suggestions are welcome.
   
   
6. Composer: I always list Composers last name, first name (Bach, Johann Sebastian) and never use any abbreviations for their names (like Bach, J.S.).
   

Join Tracks
One annoying feature of iTunes is that it will put gaps between tracks in songs. This is particularly irritating if you're listening to a piece of orchestral music that has a segue between movements (the third and last movements of Sibelius' Second Symphony, or the last two movements of Beethoven's Fifth), or an opera with short recicatives in a sequence that are separated by tracks on a CD. There are two ways to combat this problem when playing and encoding your CDs:

1. Change the Crossfade Playback Setting in iTunes: To do this, select Edit, then Preferences, and chose the Playback setting. Check off the Crossfade Playback box and slide the arrow to "0". This will change the playback on your computer, and this setting will be transferred to your iPod the next time you synchronize it with your computer.
   
   
2. Join CD Tracks in iTunes: To do this, insert a CD and highlight the tracks you want to join by selecting the first track while holding down the Shiftkey, and then selecting the other tracks. Once all tracks you want to join are highlighted, select Advanced, then Join CD Tracks. The selected tracks will be joined into one, seamless file.
   Although merging tracks converts them into one larger track, I never listen to small fragments of pieces. I listen to an entire movement of music all the way through, or start at the beginning of an Act in an opera. Nothing is more annoying than having a second or two of silence between a large dominant chord at the end of one track, a lacuna of silence, and then its resolution several seconds later. I recommend you skim through a CD before you rip it and see if there are tracks you want to join.
   

Other Suggestions and Pointers
In addition, if you don't have a big hard drive (120 GB plus), but have a large music collection and want the excellent fidelity of Apple Lossless, I suggest you eventually buy an external drive, or consider adding a second internal hard drive to your PC. I've had good results with the Western Digital external drives and I suggest you buy the biggest one you can reasonably afford.

Another recommendation, after you start putting music on your hard drive and purchasing music online is to set up a good backup system for your collection. Nothing is more miserable than having a hard drive crash and being forced to re-encode all of your CDs. If you purchase something like the Buffalo TeraStation, it comes with the option to configure it as a RAID 5 array, which I use to back up all of my music.