Understands Classical

SongKong really understands Classical music.The Metadata demands for Classical are very different to Pop/Rock music but the majority of taggers ignore the additional requirements of Classical music. There are a couple of Classical music orientated tag editors but they only work with Classical music, and even then only provide manual editing tools. SongKong can automatically differentiate between Classical and non-Classical and apply different tagging preferences for each. SongKong uses various way to identify Classical tracks, if a song does appear to be a Classical piece then the Is Classical flag is set and the Classical preferences applied.

Work and Movements

Classical composers usually work in terms of Symphonies or Sonatas rather than albums, we call these Works. These works comprise sub works or movements, and there may be additional levels. When Classical music is released as an album it may only contain part of a work, or conversely multiple works, so the album grouping may not be the most important grouping.

For your album SongKong can complete the Movement, Movement No, Movement Total and Work field. For this information to be useful in music playback we only add this information when a track represents one of more than one movement for a work on that album.

Additionally if the work or song has an Opus number we store that in the Opus field. If the song title contains a nickname we store that in the Classical Nickname field and if the song title contains an alternative cataloging no we store that in the Classical Catalog field

Add Composers to start of Album Title

Classical music albums often contains the composer name as a part of the album title but not always. Different composers often named their works simply such as Symphony No 1 so without the composer name it can be difficult to distinguish one album from another. With this option enabled SongKong will add the composer(s) surnames to the start of the album title if the composer is not in the current title to help with easier album identification.

Shorten Song Title to the Movement

The Shorten Song Title to the Movement option can be used to shorten the Title field to the movement because typically the title comprises both the work and the movement and such a title can become long and unwieldy, currently the Movement field is not well supported so most players would use the Title field for all songs and ignore the Movement field.

Track Artist

In Pop/Rock there is usually a single performer or band who is credited. They are often the composer of the song as well but if they are not the details of the writer are not usually so important, the artist credits on the release itself make it clear who should be credited for each track. In Classical music, usually various performers, an orchestra or choir, a conductor and a composer are all credited. This means we potentially have a long list of people credited for each track, and we don’t have an accepted order they should be added in. Previously the Composer was used for the Artist field, but as the Composer field is better supported in most players (such as iTunes) we usually we no longer need to add the composer to both the Artist and Composer field. In fact doesn not really make sense to add the Composer to the Artist field any longer for Classical music because often the music was composed many years ago and they were not involved in the actual recording in any way. The default for SongKong is to store the Performers, Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra and Conductor in that order, but we offer different masks for different uses.

Classical Composers and Conductors

The exact interpretation of What is Classical ? is open to interpretation but SongKong allows you to fine tune classical matching. Like all automated music taggers SongKong is always dealing with incomplete databases, a particular problem for classical music is that the database may have the list of credits for a release but not their particular role, e.g. Is Person B a composer, performer or conductor. SongKong has created a list of over six thousand people who principal activity is composing so when we find this person credited on a release we can usually assume that they are the composer even if they do not have a composer credit on that particular release. There is an additional list for conductors, if a person is a composer and conductors (or performer) then they will not be included in the composer/conductor list unless the vast majority of their credits are for one particular role. Both these lists can be modified in order to fine tune your Classical requirements.