iTunes database tweaking

[rhmahoney]

My iTunes library is mainly classical music. If I do a shuffle playlist I get a lot of single movements of 4 movement symphonies instead of the whole piece as a unit. If I change the shuffle rule to "by album' I then get 6 Vivaldi bassoon ctos in a row.

There are applescripts to join tracks together, but this entails changing the MP# to Quicktime and then ending as AAC. I don't want the resulting 2 stages of degredation.

Recently, I read of another kludge that makes a lot of detail tweaking of the metadata and no file conversion.

Put the symphony title in the album field. Now shuffle by album works.

1. select the tracks of one symphony.
2. Copy album title to comments field.
3.Place sym title in album field with the conductor's name to give it some uniqueness:  (sym 104 -marriner-asmf) for haydn.
4.Put an indicative letter in grouping field. I use AJ (album join) which fits with jjj for the degraded joined tracks mentioned in the above paragraph.
5. make new smart playlist:
-grouping contains:  J
-rating is greater than 3
-shuffle by album

 

[Chet18013]

Thanks, Russ. I've wondered if you couldn't do something like this.

Chet18013

 

[rhmahoney]

I have now made my first and second passes at the database and ended up with 10229 tracks/63.54 GB of music converted to one symphony/album. A multiclipboard utility was very valuable.

Since I have usurped the grouping tag to my use, I continued to assign tags to sub-genres:
a album join
b bassoon
c cassette
g gregorian chant
i indonesian gamelan
j joined
k celtic
p peru = andean flute music
s swingle singers
? database problems For example some of the track names make no sense and I must consult the CD booklet next summer.
_ jazz-classic fusion music. Haven't decided on a code letter for this.

I am open to suggestions on how to expand on this list.