hopkins

One thing I should note is that I manage in text files all the contributors in each session in every album (well, almost every). It has taken a lot of time to setup (especially with Mosaic box sets...), but I feel it is important especially when you have a "digital" collection and don't have the physical media on hand to check the credits. One thing I have not done systematically is to identify clearly "leaders". So my "artists" list is huge (over 3000). If I were to restrict it to "leaders" I would get a much smaller list (probably around 300), which would be much easier to classify. It is not always easy to identify leaders, and sometimes the contributor is more important than the actual leader. So I will probably just stick to a "short list" of main artists, and make sure that each album is assigned to at least one "main artist".

Thanks. Those three (or four if you include Blues/R&B) high level categories (early/trad, swing, modern) make sense, and as you mentioned, things get more complicated if you attempt to apply finer categories. The illustrations I gave were not meant necessarily to be applied "as is" but to illustrate how "fine tuning" is precarious and personal. The purpose of my post was to get a sense of what people actually used, nothing more.

This is the Library of Congress classification: Acid jazz Bop (Music) Cool jazz Dixieland music Free jazz Jazz-rock (Music) Latin jazz Nu jazz Swing (Music) Third stream (Music) Western swing (Music) Using this in my collection would result in 90% of my albums classified in 2 or 3 categories. Not very useful...

Curious to know what people's thoughts are on the classification of jazz by "genre" and the benefit of using such a classification either to catalog your collection, or access information on music websites (ex: Discogs, music download sites...). Here are a few examples. Wikipedia has the following "genres" (alphabetical): Avant-garde jazz, bebop, big band, chamber jazz, cool jazz, free jazz, gypsy jazz, hard bop, Latin jazz, mainstream jazz, modal jazz, neo-bop, post-bop, progressive jazz, soul jazz, swing, third stream, traditional jazz On the Mosaic website, for example, they have a menu by "genre" with the following: Big Band, Trad & Swing, Vocals, Jazz Guitar, Jazz Piano, Modern Jazz, Blue Note, Vinyl. If you look at the chapter structure of Schuller's Swing Era, to dig a little deeper into one "genre" - and give an example of how a music critic "organizes" things - you have chapters on: Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, then swing "quintessentials" (Lunceford and Basie), "great black bands", "great soloists", "the white bands", "territory bands" and finally "small groups". I personally don't use any "genre" classification in my collection (which is mostly digital), and think of genres very loosely, focusing mostly on artists with a sense of chronology or "era". The drawback is that its hard to organize my collection and make sense of all the albums I have, in any other way than simply listing all the artists alphabetically, which is not ideal. Thanks.

Here's one to gently start off the day.

I include all that information. The session dates are useful to get a sense of the chronology, of course, but also sometimes to find information more easily when looking at discographies (websites, books...).

I have a soft spot for this Benson version (from "Jazz on a Sunday Afternoon, Vol. 2"), showcasing pianist Mickey Tucker : Sound is bad, but its fun anyway!

Duke Ellington explains it all here: https://storyvillerecords.bandcamp.com/track/satin-doll-3

That is pretty close to what I am doing, aside for the fact that my "cards" are text files (one for each album) saved on my computer. Entering information in text files is probably quicker than entering it in any "cataloging" software (some of which have been mentioned here), and you can put whatever content you find useful, but of course it has some disadvantages as well, not least of which is the fact that I have had to develop my own solution to search and browse through all these files. There are probably software out there ("document management software", not necessarily specific to music) that could be helpful to "compile" all these files and search through their content "intelligently" - will continue to investigate. The thread has been interesting - thanks for all your input (and keep them coming).

Purchased Lame cover art on Qobuz to be replaced... Here are nice size front and back covers of the LP: https://www.hhv.de/shop/en/item/bill-english-bill-english-54384 By the way, Jan Evensmo has a nice "solography" of Seldon Powell here: http://www.jazzarcheology.com/seldon-powell/ Here is the Discogs entry for the album mentionned in the first post of the thread: https://www.discogs.com/Seldon-Powell-Sextet-Featuring-Jimmy-Cleveland-Seldon-Powell-Sextet-Featuring-Jimmy-Cleveland/master/665788

Good stuff ! I don't have a record player, and found this album on Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/fr-fr/album/bill-english-bill-english/0015700912751 Edited by "Vanguard Digital Vault". There is no CD issue referenced on Discogs. Wondering whether this is an LP "rip". Anyone familiar with those releases ?

All aspects ! Really basic stuff to start with... I think the books provided above should be a good start.

Great, thanks - French works. I looked up the author and has another book that may be a good starting point as well: https://www.amazon.fr/Bases-mots-sons-Jacques-Siron/dp/2907891235/ref=sr_1_2?__mk_fr_FR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=jacques+siron&qid=1585312451&sr=8-2

I have no knowledge of music "theory", but would like to learn. Do you have any recommendations for books or online courses that are simple, and preferably in the context of jazz music ? Thanks.

I just tested it. It is a CSV format, that you can import into Excel or Google Sheets easily. It only contains the basic album information (title, artist, release ID, label, format).

There is a risk with any software that it no longer gets maintained. The best way to avoid this is to make sure the data you enter can be exported (to a spreadsheet, for example) and re-used elsewhere if required. Is that the case with iTunes, for example? Not sure... I know "Roon", to take another example, has very limited export options. Not sure how easy it is to export data from Discogs either. Could be that even if the software is still available you may want to switch to something else. Keep that in mind... Edit: with Discogs, you can export your collection to Excel - https://www.discogs.com/users/export

+1

Could be a good time to start if you are confined at home...

First thing I do is to look up my albums on Wikipedia. It would be great to add Mosaic box sets to Wikipedia, with credits by session. I will look into it and maybe take a shot at it with one set to see how much time it takes.

For a while i was purchasing a lot of files for download (bandcamp, qobuz, storyville, etc) and its a mixed blessing. I regret doing so now, as i don't have the liner notes. With some exceptions, I now generally purchase physical CDs.

Cool, will dig further. EDIT: on the Windows version I can enter credits, but not by "session".

Took it for a spin - barcode entry is great (for CDs), and picks up basic information (tracks, artist, album art). Don't see how to enter detailed credits, which is something I care about.

Thanks, will test it out.

I used Discogs for a while and did end up adding a few "releases". Identifying duplicates is useful - Discogs is good with that if all the data is entered. You can search a track title + artist + year and it will quickly find the corresponding albums. Their database is impressive in terms of releases. One thing I do is synchronize my folders to Google Drive. The search works on the content of the documents, including images and pdfs which automatically go through OCR, with variable results of course. Serves as a backup as well - probably more costly than a local backup though. Searching using Google Drive is not optimal, however, and it is sonetimes hard to make sense of the results.

Thanks. Can you give me an example (screen copy, if possible) to show the information you store on iTunes, just to see how it looks ? EDIT: looked on the web - you enter this information as metadata by track ? Also, found this interesting point of view on the challenges of using iTunes for Jazz: http://www.harlem.org/itunes/ What's your experience ?