Importing classical music

I use iTunes 9.1.1 on Windows XP and want to import about 1.500 cd's of classical music (AAC 320 kbps). I see that every album is stored in folders the following way: first name of the artist and then in a subfolder the name of the album. (Artist / Album). For classical music that's not logical. Logical is: Composer / Album / Artist. Is there a possibility to change that?
I also heard some rumours aout a new version of iTunes this summer. I hope there are some extra features on managing large libraries better. For example: if you have more than one library, you can hold the shift-key while clicking the iTunes icon for a popup that let you choose the library you want. That is rather complex. Why not a on-off box in the advanced properties tab in the Edit -Preferences menu option?
Thanks for an answer

For classical music I tend to use the Composer as the Artist & Album Artist and either discard the performer details or place these into the Comments field.
If you're really particular about how your tracks get organised at the file & folder level then MediaMonkey has some extensive renaming tools. The drawback with using these is you then have to remove & reimport all your tracks from iTunes. I have been working on a script called FilenameFromTag to manage renaming my tracks just the way I want which also updates iTunes as part of the process. It is still kind of a work in progress but if you're interested you could tweak it to rename your files just the way you like. You simply select some tracks, call the script, and it renames them accordingly. At the moment it doesn't tidy up emptied folders or relocate folder art but I hope to import these features from the CleanDeadArt project soon.
tt2

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PC hard drive died and I have replaced it. Need to import the music on my iPod, but get a message that it's synced with another library (old hard drive). How do I import the music onto new hard drive? Senuti's just for macs.No old hard drive to copy.

My PC hard drive died and I have replaced it. Need to import the music on my classic iPod, but get a message that it's synced with another library (old hard drive). How do I import the music onto the new hard drive? Senuti (one respondent's suggestion) is just for macs. I have no old hard drive to copy to the new hard drive (another respondent's suggestion.)

See this older thread from another forum member Zevoneer on different ways to copy music from your iPod back to your PC.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2417169?start=0&tstart=0
B-rock

Why is iTunes11 against classical music?

As someone involved in the international regulation of cyberspace and the standards that enable it to function, I have watched Apple recently make a number of mistakes that are increasingly isolating it from governments and the commercial, particularly business, marketplace. Their non-participation in many of the key international committees in our collaborative world is a pity, not just for Apple, but for its customers - including me. In particular, they aren't participating in key cybersecurity groups, so there is a real possibility in the future that Apple's hardware will be physically unable to connect to any trusted network for the handling of sensitive information, such as your patient record. Their folly is breathtaking. I am discovering more shortcomings in Apples latest products, which is a pity. Most of these affect me professionally.
However, this one affects me personally. It is their refusal to engage with loyal customers that is the most frustrating issue - you can tell by the mood in these support communities. What has really got me is the way in which Apple has really gone to war on classical music folks in iTunes 11, by removing a wide range of controls for managing and listening to tracks (not songs, these are (media) tracks, Apple, not all musicians are singers!). In iTunes 11, Apple has completely failed to understand that Albums have Artists (as well as Album Artists) and Composers. And Composers are at least as important as Albums or Artists.
In iTunes 11, when I click on an Album, I cannot get it to show a composer for the tracks on the Album under any circumstances. Worse, when you search on a composer using keywords, it doesn't find all the tracks for that composer (so there is a problem in the search engine, which worked fine previously). So my/our ability to sort our music to listen to albums or tracks by a specific composer, which has been in iTunes for as long as I can remember, has gone in iTunes 11. So too has reliable, accurate searching. What a shambles. It lays bare Apple's failure to test products properly - I regret to say this is happening elsewhere with an increasing frequency.
Has anyone found a way to correct Apple's massive errors and restore the flexibility of iTunes10 in iTunes11 to:
reconfigure the Album window so that it displays attributes that the user requires, not what Apple's uncultured nerd limits the user to seeing.
extend the View options which are far too limited. This is a database, so I should have enough controls to manage and view the data
configure the Bar that has Songs, Albums, Artists, Genres, Videos and Radio to add other attributes, particularly Composers and Album Artist
find ways to sort by any attribute in other views. I can only get the attribute list to show when you have Songs selected.
For Apple. Pay attention - I want my flexibility back!! Remember Apple - the Customer is Always Right!

You are SO right about making things useful to the user:
Interactions should be minmal to achieve what the user wants to do or what the user does most-often, not what you might want them to do and not trying to alter how they want to do it, particularly if it makes it less intuitive.
User interfaces should be natural and intuitive, not convoluted nor indirect, requiring the least thought and action, with ALL natural actions being in front of the user at EACH and EVERY step of a process.
'Pretty' should be an addition or an option, way down the list past 'Functional' and 'Usable'.
It matters less, strangely, what genre or type we're discussing, the issues are the same: things which were once easy, natural and intuitive now require more actions in many cases to achieve the desired results while things that are decorative but less useful require few (but not always fewER) actions.
Saddening, isn't it?

Classical music playlists

Hi,
Desperately seeking software tools to aid in building classical music playlists that sort the symphony movements correctly. There are no standards in the classical world to labeling the different movements--typically, four (or five) movements to a symphony. Order is important in classical music. Any leads?

It's the age old story of Mohammed and the mountain. If the tags in the files don't allow you to do what you want, then you have to bite the bullet and change the tags.
I don't have much experience with classical, but give me an example of what's giving you trouble and I'll see if I can help.

Classical music

What happened to your classical music access on iTunes? I could not find any way to get to it today.
Philip Shelton
[email protected]

Insert the CD. Before you Import, select the tracks
you want to play as one.
Go to Advanced menu, select Join CD Tracks, then
import.
Thanks for this, which solves the CD problem. But is it possible to join the tracks of a CD I buy and download from the iTunes store? The Join CD Tracks isn't highlighted, which suggests the only possibility is to join them before I download. Is that possible?

Classical Music storing and sorting

Hi all,
I love classical music and have a lot of them in my iTunes and iPod 30G.
I'm used to editing their tags like this:
- Name: BWV 1048 - Brandenburg Concertos #3 In G - 1. Allegro
- Artist: Capella Istropolitana/ Bohdan Warchal
- Album: Bach: Brandenburg Concertos
- Composer: Bach, Johann Sebastian
But I think that this is not quite nice, because:
- The name of this masterpiece is "Brandenburg Concertos #3"
- "BWV 1048" is a sorting method, not a name
- "In G" and "1. Allegro" are like suffixes of the name, the tune and the movement
- "Capella Istropolitana" is an artist, but "Bohdan Warchal", the conductor, other artist
Does anyone have a tip for me, to store and sort my music better?
Thanks!
Aldo

As you say, in Classical music the composer is more important than the performer. Personally, I put the composer in the 'Artist' field as well as the composer field, and list the performers in the 'Info' section along with recording dates, venues, etc. Also, I put the 'year' as the year of composition, rather than the year of recording. For the track titles I just have the title or indication of the movement, eg 'Allegro' and use the track numbering to put them in the right order. So your example would end up as:
- Name: Allegro
- Track #: 1 of 3
- Artist: Johann Sebastian Bach
- Album: Brandenburg Concerto #3 In G, BWV 1048
- Year: 1721
- Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
- Notes: Capella Istropolitana/ Bohdan Warchal
The downside of this is that you end up with lots of tracks called 'Allegro' and 'Adagio'!

Shuffle, Grouping, and Classical Music

Okay, I've been struggling with advanced shuffles in iTunes. Here's the dilemma... most classical music has several movements.
This becomes troublesome when I try to shuffle my music. I'll often listen to iTunes for 6 hours running, and would like it to randomly pick music. However, I would also like it to pick the movements of my classical music in order.
I've successfully shuffled by album with my U2 collection, however I can't seem to shuffle by grouping with my classical collection. I assume this is because some tracks in a single grouping have different albums, but why would iTunes do this?
Example of desired behavior:
-randomly select Beethoven's 5th.
-play movements 1-4 of Beethoven's 5th in order
-randomly select something else, say Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto.
-play movements 1-3 of Mozart's 21st PC in order
-randomly select something else.
Now, is there a way to do this in iTunes? How about Party Shuffle? I use this feature all the time, and would love to use it for classical, too. And are there any ways to do shuffle like this on an iPod I'm considering for purchase?

Do you have the cds of the music?
If so, reimport the cd. Before importing, select the track which you want grouped together. I.e: 5-8. Select track 5, hold down the shift key and arrow down to track 8. Then, go to the advanced menu at the top of the menu bar and select "join cd tracks." Now import. This creates one long track including tracks 5-8.
Got it?
If this is already imported music, and you don't want to reimport it, there are applications that will let you join already imported music. It will not join protected AAC files. You would have to burn those to a disc and reimport.
iTunes Join 3 is one. It cost $10.00. Note: I haven't used it myself.

ITunes 9 store classical music nightmare

I foolishly upgraded my iTunes from 8 to 9 and now I am finding it much harder to find things. One reason is that Composer and Release Date are no longer displayable in the "See all" view (which requires an extra click and wait to get to). Another reason is this view is divided into pages and sort only works within the current page.
Suppose I want to see the most recent albums by Steve Reich (say). How can I do that with iTunes 9?
Column Browser is no use for classical music either, because it uses Artist rather than Composer to filter for Album. I can't see any way of changing this.
Until searching the store for classical music becomes feasible again, I will go back to buying CDs and importing those. iTunes is simply too much hassle.

I find this and the white background both very irritating. And, on my collections, they have split my Classical genre into two playlists: Classical & Classical Music. Why? I now can't browse in one category of music. I have no way of readily knowing if the two overlap or not, since there are 700+ albums in each slot. I'm all for upgrading the quality of the software engine and improving the experience of using it. But not when there are such ill-conceived changes that make it more difficult. I would like an option to retain genre categories and the store interface.

Itunes & ATV: Classical Music Question

Hi - I'm usually really excellent with organizing my library of classical but I just caem across something via my new Apple TV which has stumped me - I'm sure there is an easy fix...just not sure what it is. Here is the scenario:
I have in my library multiple complete sets of the Beethoven Symphonies (1-9). I don't have any issues when using iTunes alone or even my iPhone with this - on my Applek TV, I scroll down in the COMPOSER field and choose Beethoven. I am then presented with an alphabetical list of the works in my library on the track level - when you get down to the "Symphonies" instead of seeing:
Beethoven: Symphony 1: mvt 1 (Bernstein)
Beethoven: Symphony 2: mvt 2 (Bernstein)
etc., etc.
I see something like
Beethoven: Symphony 1: mvt 1 (Bernstein)
Beethoven: Symphony 1: mvt 1 (Abbado)
Obviously this would "go away" if I just chose this by ALBUM - in any event, is this where either the GROUPING or SORTING would help - I have yet to use them and I rarely see them used on purchased music as well. Thank you ina dvance for any help.
Steve

From my experience, a good way to handle this issue is through playlists. I first create a new playlist for CD or CD set. When the CD is loaded and its contents appears in a new iTunes window, I select all of the tracks and drag them to the playlist. I've found it easier to work with the tracks within a playlist.
Once in a playlist, select the first track, right-click, select "get info", and select the tab labeled "sorting". There are 2 columns: the left one with "name", "artist", "album" , "album artist", "composer" etc, and the right with: "sort name", "sort artist", etc.
Because I use both an iPhone and and iPad where display space is limited, for the name, I have usually have something like this "Bach: Brandenburg #1 F 1-Allegro BWV 1046" but for the sort name "Bach: Brandenburg #1 BWV 1046-1" etc. For a piece in, for example, D minor I use "Dmin", and use musical notation for sharp and flat rather than the word or an abbreviation.
I've found absolutely no consistency in how tracks are numbered, sometimes with regular numerals, sometimes Roman numerals, occasional mislabeling, etc.
I'd like to know how others import and manage their classical music.

Organizing classical music with itunes

I am having trouble handling my classical music on itunes. I would like to be able to look up music by style and/or period (for example romantic, or renaissance) and then by composer, and then by instrument (for example oboe) and then by piece.
I listen to all kinds of music and am happy with the method itunes gives me with all but classical. I like to shuffle my music but shuffling classical is disasterous. How can I make sure that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd movement are always played in correct order and kept together as a separate "song" en toto when I want my ipod to shuffle all music but classical?
I would also like at least two separate artist search lists. Although I don't mind coming across Beatles next to Beach Boys I don't particularly want to come across Beach Boys next to Brahms.
I have been struggling with this on my own for some time and coming up short so I figured to see if there was a better way by coming here. Any help is appreciated.

I am having trouble handling my classical music on itunes. I would like to be able to look up music by style and/or period (for example romantic, or renaissance) and then by composer, and then by instrument (for example oboe) and then by piece.
You could add thet information into the comments area and do a smart playlist, but this is a limitation of the tagging format.
I listen to all kinds of music and am happy with the method itunes gives me with all but classical. I like to shuffle my music but shuffling classical is disasterous. How can I make sure that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd movement are always played in correct order
Shuffle by nature randomizes tracks. You can exclude tracks from being shuffled but short of importing the pieces as one big track, you cannot bring control to something random.
I would also like at least two separate artist search lists. Although I don't mind coming across Beatles next to Beach Boys I don't particularly want to come across Beach Boys next to Brahms.
Thats the nature of alphabetization. The problem of a second artist search is that it destroys the continuity of searches. That just won't happen.

Genius Question regarding classical music (or meta-data in general)

OK - I have a fairly large library and probably 50% of it has meta-data that when pulled up automatically I leave (this is for the bulk, but not all of non-classical genres) as is post import and/or purchase from itunes. Now, here is the enchilada:
I am a big classical music listener and m constantly tweaking my library to make it as easy as possible to organize classical music - I still don't have it perfected as there isn't a standard - there are many standards and many are based on how you want to prioritize/search for things: I use composer as the "main" field to search(I have it as Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus as opposed to just Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) and then I also search by Artist as a secondary way which is fine should I want to focus on a conductor or a string quartet, etc.
Now, there are basically three options that most folks will use with classical meta-data:
1. If purchased from iTunes, leave it as is
2. If pulled from CDDB, leave it as is
3. My methodology: I do both 1 & 2 and more than 95% of the time I have to tweak the way it looks.
Assuming all of this is common amongst the 65,000,000 iTunes users, I would love to know how Genius works with this - I uploaded to he Genius Cloud last night my library. How does Genius look at the same album which may have either simple or significant meta-data discrepencies/changes vs. the way it is in the iTunes system? Have I lost anyone in my rambling??
Thanks,
Steve
hearand I do it by last name, first name

Based on what I have been seeing over at the Macworld forums, Genius does not play too well with classical music and the situation is really bad if the user modifies any fields to their liking. Using the ISRC code would make more sense, as it is something the user cannot modify and to rely on user-definable fields would result in many libraries being crippled in terms of the new feature.
In terms of the metadata, there are two composer fields: Composer and Sort Composer. You would place “Mozart” or “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” in the composer tag and “Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus” in the Sort Composer tag to force the proper sorting order.

HT1473 I just got a new computer and want to import my music (current playlists and all music) from my ipod to my new computer. How do I do this?

I just got a new computer and want to import my music from my ipod classic and keep my current play lists. How do I do this?

You can go to the pictures folder on your old computer and copy the "iPhoto library" file and copy it to a thumb drive or something like that and then just open it on your new Mac.

ITunes has skips in playback for classical music

After importing a CD into iTunes, there seem to be skips in the playback. This only happens with my classical music CDs. I've tried changing import settings such as the encoder (from aac to aiff) and turning error correction on and off. It also happens when the songs are played using quicktime. Anyone know what the problem is and if there is a solution?
Thanks!

Thanks Dan Clark3,
Currently am ripping to the internal drive. I rip at 320 kpbs when using the AAC format, 16 bit when doing AIFF. Sample rates are 44.1. It's interesting that it doesn't happen with non-classical recordings. But, I tried ripping on another computer I own (powermac g4 running OS X 10.3.9 at the same rates and everything was fine. It must be the drive. I found out I cannot burn CDs anymore on this particular machine, so problem solved I guess.
I remember having this problem when I burned CDs of recordings I made in college. Always with the skipping sounds; but I chalked it up to the speed of the computer.
Let me know how if anything is fixed by ripping to the internal drive...

Importing Classical CDs – Grouping of Movements

Hi,
When I buy classical music from iTunes, multiple tracks comprising one work (e.g. all movements of a piano concerto) are almost always coveniently grouped together indicated by a little wedge in iTunes which lets me show/hide the individual tracks.
Unfortunately, when I import some of my old CDs, I can't figure out how to do the same trick. The closest I have come is using 'part of compilation', but the result is albums broken up into chunks of tracks instead. Joining the tracks before importing does help either. It does exactly what it says: Lumps all tracks together into one giant track.
Does anybody know how to do this kind of grouping?
Thanks,
Michael Knudsen

Do this BEFORE you import the CD.
Put the CD in. Click on the CD in iTunes SOurce.
Select the tracks you want linked, go to Advanced menu and select Join CD Tracks.
This basically makes them one song file.
Gotta do this with Heatbreaker & Livin' Lovin' (She's Just a Woman).

Home sharing won't play classical music

Ok, this is a really strange one.
I have just finished ripping all my CDs - about 450 of them - to my MacPro in ALAC format. After I finished, I turned on Home Sharing to share this wonderful new library I created. Home sharing works from the MacPro to my iPhone (IOS 5.0.1), but none of my other computers (my MacBook and Mini) can play any classical tracks. They can all see the files but when I try to play them, an appears besides each track. Every other genre plays fine. Like What's With That!!
Anyone else seen this?? Wonder if Apple specifically doesn't like classical music ... Right.
If I import the files into local iTunes libraries on my MacBook and Mini, they all play fine - just wont play with Home Sharing.
Anyway, any suggestions would be greatly welcome.
Thanks.

FORGOT TO MENTION everything worked fine last week before I reinstalled XP

Importing classical music

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