There’s also The GRAMMY Awards you didn’t see, which, if you didn’t know, include sixty-eight awards presented in the afternoon before the televised portion.² Therein lies my, and likely your, main area of focus: the classical, recording/production, and jazz awards. It’s unfortunate that the networks won’t televise this part of the day too. And the rich get richer, etc., etc., etc..

My final impression regarding the music that matters (to me) is that I fondly recall the days when the NAXOS label was producing budget-friendly discs of music outside the normal cannon. Today they do all that; but, they win GRAMMYs for it.

America loves the X-Factor, which seems to be actively trying to lobotomize its 12.5 million viewers through vocal techniques, while only 5.3 million people decided to tune into a show where the judges talk about things like tempo, blend, tuning, and balance. You know, music stuff.

It’s not just the judges that make The Sing-Off great; the singing on The Sing-Off is superb.¹ The audience needn’t wade through an endless series of hacks and jokers set in place to lower the audience’s standards so that the next marginally sane person to take the stage deserves some consideration. Nope, none of that. The Sing-Off judges booted a 5-man group that was extremely polished but failed to connect with the audience. Although this might be like comparing which of the Jersey Shore guys is the least moronic, The Sing-Off is the smartest music show on national TV.

These competition shows always get me fired up. Mostly because I see them as a shortcut for people who don’t want to sacrifice and put in the hard work that is necessary to achieve the musical success that they believe they want. But I still watch them because I enjoy listening to new talent and seeing it grow (or not grow) throughout the arc of the show. It’s a family event in our house. I have to wonder about the people who lack as quick of a trigger-finger on the fast-forward button as I have.² Most of what we watched this week was a metaphoric dumpster-fire and I fear that it lowers the public’s standards of taste and talent to a dangerously low level.

The following headings are my “default” set of fields running across the top of my iTunes library. Of course they can be re-arranged in any order, but this is how I like to keep them.

Name

This is the name of the track (duh!). In most cases I use the title of the track. Since iOS devices don’t support the grouping tag, which we will get to in a moment, I tag multi-movement works with:

FullTitleOfWork - 1. FullTitleOfMovement

so an example would look like:

Harmonielehre - 3. Meister Eckhardt & Quackie

Occasionally it is beneficial to include opus numbers or dates in this field to distinguish sets of piece from each other on an iOS device. For example:

Etude in F Major, Op. 10, No. 8 by Chopin, Frédéric recorded by Murray Perahia

vs.

Etude in F Minor, Op. 25, No. 2 by Chopin, Frédéric recorded by Murray Perahia

The easiest way to tell which set of etudes I am looking at is the opus number in the title field. However, if there’s no need for a distinction I do not include additional information to keep the title field length manageable.

Grouping

The grouping tag is used to group tracks with different names together, i.e. multi-movement works. This is particularly nice in iTunes for isolating multiple recordings of the same piece for comparison listening. The ninja-trick is to be exact with your syntax when tagging each piece. I always include opus numbers and occasionally dates if it will help delineate this work from another similarly titled work.

Note: This usually doubles the first part of the name field so it’s not entirely necessary. I hope that someday iOS devices will support this field, but I’m not holding my breath.

Time

Auto-filled in. No touchy.

Artist

This is where things can get wonky. This field is mandatory — I never leave it blank. I never include multiple people or things in this field so only one name goes into this field. If there is a clear single performer, I use that. If it’s an orchestra, I put the conductor’s name in this field.

I use the format FirstName LastName here because my brain thinks of performers by their first names. I’m still not sure why.

If the track has multiple performers (i.e. Jay-Z featuring Kanye West) I include the main performer on the album, and put the other performer in the comments area with the syntax feat. Kanye West. When I search for Kanye West in iTunes this track will come up. However, when I select the artists tab on my iPhone I won’t see multiple entries for Jay-Z all on the same album.

For classical duos I use the main performer here and put the other name in the comments with their instrument. (i.e. Artist: Gideon Kramer; Comments: Emanuel Ax, piano).

Album Artist

This field is new with iTunes 7. It was intended to solve the above mentioned problem of XYZ feat. LMNOP. In most cases the same name as the Artist goes in here, and in these cases I usually don’t bother to fill in the field. Where this field comes in handy is with orchestra recordings. I always include the name of the orchestra in this field so that no matter who the conductor is I can group all of the Chicago recordings together, or all of the Met Opera, etc.

The reason I don’t use this field in the aforementioned Jay-Z conundrum is because it does not map correctly to iOS devices. The intention is that the Album Artist is the main artist on the album and the Artist is the featured guest. But iOS only recognizes the Artist field, so it actually fractures your artist lists instead of unifies them. Maybe it will be fixed someday.

I don’t mind this for orchestral recording because I rarely search by artist for them. I invariably use the composer search and then drill down.

Album

The album title goes here. Sometimes classical music albums do not have titles. In that case I make something up that reminds me what is on the album (i.e. Alfred Brendel: Schubert Impromptus).

Composer

This field is also mandatory. I always use the syntax LastName, FirstName because I think of composers by their last names. Using this syntax also makes for ideal alphabetical sorting. For songs (you know, the ones with words), I list the lyricist. Some pop songs have long lists of songwriters, none of which I recognize. In that case I usually include the first one listed. I’ll never look up those songs by composer anyway.

I know it is common to include the composer’s dates in this field, but I think that is what Wikipedia is for. As I mentioned earlier, my iTunes database is huge, so I try to keep it as trim as possible for searching and sorting.

Genre

I have a limited number of genres that I use. They are:

• Alternative
• Blues
• Classical
• Comedy
• Country
• Drum Corps
• Folk
• Funk
• Hip-Hop & Rap
• Holiday
• Jazz
• Pop
• R&B/Soul
• Reggae
• Rock
• Soundtrack
• Tango

I am very reluctant to add a new genre unless I have a large number of tracks that I feel should be grouped together. Using these large categories allows for better shuffle-play. Drum Corps, Holiday, and Soundtrack exists solely to exclude those tracks from genius lists and smart playlists.

Year

The year of the original release of the recording. A simple Google search will usually yield this information quickly.

Rating

I use the stars to rate tracks. Here’s my system:

1 Star

• Needs to be deleted or re-downloaded
• Duplicates
• Sound Effects
• Holiday Music (also genre tagged)
• Song Parts
• Something I will search for, but has no other purpose

2 Stars

• Bad music

3 Stars

• Mediocre tracks
• Weird, but important
• Could be good
• Need to re-listen
• Long tunes (not good for shuffle)

4 Stars

• Tracks I like to listen to
• Will go on the iPod

5 Stars

• Awesome tracks

iTunes will use your rankings for shuffle and genius lists by favoring higher ranked tracks.

Disc

I always fill this field in, even if there is only one disc. For multi-disc sets, it’s a no-brainer.

Comments

…or as I think of it, Notes.

This field is for optional metadata, some of which I have included above. Two major “tags” that I use in this field are @saxophone and @piano, as those two categories dominate the majority of my classical music library. With those tags in place I can build smart playlists that hold only @saxophone tracks ranked 4 or higher, giving me a best-of classical saxophone list that I can put on my iPhone. I also have a smart playlist that includes all of my classical genre except tracks with the @saxophone tag, you know, for easy listening.

At times I need to do more research to complete the metadata for a track. I tag those tracks with @needsData and I have a smart playlist that collects them.

How to use the metadata

Once you have all of that latent metadata in the system it becomes easy to leverage it in many ways. The first method I use is “Best of” smart playlists to pull out the top-rated tracks from each genre. So every genre except Drum Corps, Holiday, and Soundtrack have a playlist that only holds tracks with 4 or 5 star ratings.

I have a playlist of the 100 Greatest Rap Songs that I downloaded from somewhere. I spent a few hours listening to excerpts of each track (some of them I knew already) and rating them. Then I collected the 4 and 5 star tracks into a smart playlist called “100 Rap Songs ± 20%” which is a great shuffle list.

The possibilities are bountiful when your database is robust.

Conclusion

Is it fiddley? Yeah, sure. But isn’t library maintenance always fiddley? This system allows me to find music on my iMac along with my various devices very quickly and yet also allows me to generate great playlists and shuffle orders. I encourage you to take this summer to organize your iTunes library. You will be glad that you did.

• The step in the creative process where you appear to be doing nothing.
• Whether or not it is possible to keep up with all of the new music being created today.
• White & Black Tie concert dress
• The value of Twitter and other social media to the arts.

Head over to SoundNotion.tv to watch the video or download the audio. I strongly urge you to subscribe to their podcast (video / audio); it’s a really great show.

Thanks for having me on the show.

The “digital age” is awesome.

Thank you all so much for supporting our project. I deserve little credit for the effort compared to my friend, David, and his considerable foresight into this project’s conception. All I wanted was a piece by my talented friend; what I got was a commission by a growing number of interested, passionate people who were willing to put up a little cash for the sake of art.

Although it was David’s idea and it is to him I will be forever grateful, you deserve the bulk of the credit. I can not adequately express how amazing everyone who has donated or helped spread the word has made me feel over the past two weeks. I never imagined we would meet our goal so fast and we owe it to all of you who helped.

I have been fortunate enough to be a part of commissions, premieres, recordings, and even a Pulitzer submission. I will say, with all honesty, this trumps them all.

Why?

Because it gives me hope that the public’s support for the arts is not limited by cynicism, indulgence, taste, or scarcity. It’s not even limited by reach. It’s not limited. It’s boundless, inspiring, and overwhelming. It only needed a catalyst, like Kickstarter, to find a way to make something that I never, ever though I would be able to do into something that just happened.

David has some of his own thoughts on his blog too. Do take a moment to read them because David is awesome and he made this happen. No other reason is necessary.

Needless to say, this is only the beginning. Please do not hesitate to get involved. You can still receive the benefits while we attempt to push to $1000. Why not fund this admirable project 200%? If we can do that, David and I can make a statement that music patronage in the digital age is alive and well when we start our next project. Although he may not know it yet, we’re working on a paper and lecture about the new Esterházy’s: THAT’S YOU! We are already brainstorming this document and we will start working on it when David (finally) finishes college. Forever.

In closing: THANK YOU! You all amaze me, and I am proud to be a part of it.

<3

Timothy Rutherford-Johnson has a moving obituary on his site.

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki: 1933-2010. Rest in peace.

“But, Tim,” you say, “I really hate CDs. They take up all kinds of space, are easily lost or scratched and take a long time to rip to my iTunes.”

First-off: Buck-up, Nancypants. You want to be an audiophile? You gotta work for it sometimes. HOWEVEA, there is a burgeoning marketplace of distributors ready to fulfill your desire for convenience as well as meet your taste for high quality.

Enter: Lossless Downloads. Yes, what was once a dream among audiophiles is quickly become a reality. Numerous labels and distributors are offering affordable downloads of lossless quality music DRM-free (because not everyone is a criminal). Your humble curator has taken the time to compile a convenient list from which you are mere index-finger movements away from satiating your desires. Clearly the list is biased towards classical music, because quite frankly most “commercial” music is so over compressed that the data lost actually improves the track.

So no more excuses. Now you are responsible to hear everything on the track, because it’s all there. Hear the airiness of the violin strings? Hear the sleeves of the conductor as he over-beats the quiet section? Now you can and now I think you should. iTunes is great for organization, but until the music store catches up with the needs for serious listeners its lossless audio for me.

A few weeks ago my great friend, David MacDonald, asked me about my paper. I have been fairly mum about it because I didn’t even know if I could prove what I believed to be true. After I stumbled through a 25 word, beer-laced synopsis, David, a big thinker and reliable skeptic, made “that face”¹ and basically told me that he thought I was full of shit.² Never one to back down from a challenge, and as a guy who needs that occasional ass-kicking, I got to work proving him wrong.

I started doing a lot of reading. One chapter or article, every day, no exceptions. If David didn’t think I knew what I was talking about, then I probably didn’t. I was able to find out a lot about the topic, but not a lot about the composer, who is, in this case, the late William Albright. Unfortunately, as brilliant as his music is, scholarly research concerning his musical ideas and personal philosophies is confined to his obituaries. That wasn’t going to cut it.

Back to the bar.

As it so happened, another great friend spurred me on the next week. The brilliant Laura Donnelly asked me about my research (because Laura is basically a pro-researcher; your mind: boggled) and I told her about my problem. Since she’s such a pro, she said, “You should contact the University of Michigan Library.³ They might have something that can help you.” See? Pro.

So I contacted the U of M Library. I admit, I wasn’t very hopeful, but I needed to try. As it turns out, the U of M Bentley Historical Library actually had all of Albright’s papers cataloged and available to the public! Score! I made plans to go.

The whole morning I was pumped. I was going to do real research! Judging by the titles of the documents, I was pretty sure I could find something I could at least crowbar into supporting my point. Boy, was I in for a big surprise.

When you arrive at the library you have to write your name and vital information on, no lie, four sheets of paper, before they will disappear into the depths of their catalog and bring out one of the 77 boxes that hold Albright’s papers. I started with box 8 which contained most of Albright’s lecture notes and professional files. They brought it to me, explained the rules of reading: only one folder may be removed fro the box at a time. A large placeholder must be inserted into the box. The order of the folders must be preserved. Made sense, if not a little bit OCD. Whatever.

I pulled out my first folder, opened it, and it hit me. This man was real. He wrote things with his hands. On paper. Until then he was just a name at the top of the pieces I was playing. An idea. When I saw his handwriting on yellow legal paper, he became real. It was like seeing the Mona Lisa. At that point Albright wasn’t an idea anymore. He was fingers, and blood, and problems, and life. I flipped through that folder once, just to see what it was like, and to get over that feeling, because I was really moved by what I was looking at.

That’s what it looked like.  Not surprisingly, I spent a lot of the day trying to figure out what some of his words were. There were hundreds of pages that looked like this on all different kinds of paper. Unlike me, Albright seemed to prefer handwriting to typing. Also, unlike me, he also seemed to be willing to write with whatever on whatever he had around. I saw documents written on the backs of department memos, and some written in calligraphy marker. If nothing else, he was a devout recycler.

One of the other interesting things that I was able to glean just from examining this box is that he must have been a horrible filer. He wrote the document you see above nearly 20 times and saved it in his office until he died. Over the years it went through a few changes and expanded slightly, but it remained essentially the same over the 20 years. He clearly was a fan of using outlines to guide his lectures, but comfortable enough with what he was speaking about not to need to write it all out. He believed it.

Now I believe it too. I found things in his writing that came more closely to proving my hypothesis that I could have imagined. It’s very frustrating to me that he isn’t around to pin down on these questions that remain, but these documents go so far for me. I am grateful to the U of M for having the foresight to catalog an old drunk’s documents and make them available to the public. I am also deeply grateful for my super smart, talented, awesome friends who kick my ass when I need it and give me advice that helps me.

I’m telling you, you have to rely on your friends. Thanks guys.

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