Music

Composition: Date Created

2008-06-25T17:11:53.0012Z

Good suggestions. I’ve made these changes over on sandbox for comment; I’ll recreate them here if folks like them.

Composition: Date Created

2008-06-25T11:09:10.0015Z

Could we have a Date Created (type Date/Time) property?

Also a First Played (type Date/Time) property would be good. Possibly extend this to a compound type including a first played (type Location) property?

Composition: Traditional compositions

2008-05-28T03:55:57.0000Z

That’s a good question, Joe. A particular recording of a traditional tune is likely a recording of an arrangement of the tune, true. But one might still want to discuss a folk song in its own right, and there is a difference between the lack of a composer assertion and the positive assertion that the tune is traditional.

I don’t know what the right answer is. Should there be a Boolean property for traditional compositions? Should we do what every other database does and create a pseudo-composer named Traditional?

Do you want to start a discussion on the Music Modeling Interest Group or possibly the data modeling mailing list?

Guitarist: Some properties

2008-05-28T00:11:55.0000Z

Brandon,

Thanks for the suggestions. I am not sure how best to model guitarists, but that’s why we have the Freebase community approach.

Go ahead and prototype a version of Guitarist in your own domain with the properties you think it needs. Then post here or in the Music Modeling Interest Group and get other people to comment on it. If people seem to like it, we can update Guitarist with your properties.

Musical Artist: Adding a founders property

2008-05-27T19:37:51.0007Z

Not a bad idea.

It’s a kind of denormalization, though; when there are dates, you can tell who was a member of the group at its earliest dates.

When we run into a denormalization issue, what usually makes the difference is the use cases. Is there something particular you want to do with founders? Is it just something that would be cool to see? How hard is it to find founders without it?

You are right that this belongs on Musical Group rather than Musical Artist, though. The dates you mention are the start and end of musical careers; it applies to individuals as well as to groups (though, unlike groups, the individuals exist before and sometimes after their careers).

Musical Group: Ex-Members Property

2008-05-27T17:12:40.0000Z

Band membership has a beginning and end date; former members should have an end date, although it's true that in many cases Freebase won't have that data. But, in my opinion, splitting the membership roster into separate properties for current and former members would cause a bigger problem for cases where we don't know a musician's status -- it forces us to arbitrarily make an assertion (current or former) when we lack the knowledge to make that assertion. At least with the current model, you can say that someone was or is in a band when you don't know the current line-up.

I think the current model will be a little clearer if we get the ability to store the notion of "current" or "present" in date fields.

Composition: Traditional compositions

2008-05-26T15:41:21.0012Z

Is there a preferred way to indicate that a piece is generally credited as "traditional" (often with an arranger credit)? It's clear that imported data sometimes perpetuates "Trad" as a composer.

I suppose using "Arrangement" and leaving "Composer" blank is the best alternative?

Musical Group: Ex-Members Property

2008-05-24T23:16:37.0012Z

Wouldn't it make since to have an Ex-Members property?

Guitarist: Some properties

2008-05-24T22:40:30.0012Z

I think we need an Amplifiers Property. We may also need to split Electric Guitars and Acoustic guitars since pro guitarists have so many guitars.

There should also be a discussion about how to handle custom guitars, but that's up to the Guitars type.

Musical Artist: Adding a founders property

2008-05-23T19:13:19.0024Z

There should be an additional property for the founders as distinguished from members, thought maybe this would fit better in the music group type since the notion of a founder for an individual artist would usually be an odd fit. On the other hand, dates of founding and dissolution are in the music artist type, so maybe founder should be in proximity to those.

Music: Musical performance role?

2008-05-22T18:43:15.0013Z

Musical instrument includes Musical Performance Role, and drum is both. The reason for the co-typing is so that an artist in a band can have the roles of lead vocals and bass guitar, without having to have separate properties for each.

Music: Musical performance role?

2008-05-22T17:42:12.0005Z

I just noticed that "drum" is typed "Musical performance role" which seems to be a very confusing name. Shouldn't the type be "musical instrument"?

Composition: Opus Numbers

2008-05-20T23:49:15.0000Z

Welcome!

Unfortunately—as you probably know from using MusicBrainz and other databases—classical music is not generally well-modeled. We have it on our to-do list, but just plain haven’t gotten to it yet.

You can help us out, though! First, check out and join the Music Modeling Interest Group; start a conversation or three there.

Second, you can model the features you feel are missing in your own personal domain. Then post about them on the interest group or on the data modeling mailing list, and once there’s agreement, we can easily promote them to the music domain.

Thanks!

Composition: Opus Numbers

2008-05-20T23:38:30.0005Z

Hi,

I've just discovered Freebase (through musicbrainz) and have quite a lot of classical music data which I would like to add.

What about Opus Numbers and catalogue numbers - I can't find anywhere to put them!

A table of which composers have which types of catalogue numbers would be a good entry too ( I have some data on this, too).

Music: Musician type?

2008-05-16T02:54:39.0011Z

I changed my mind… “Instruments Played” and “Vocal Range” are now properties of Musical Artist, reciprocated by the Musical instrument and Musical vocal types. I have migrated the few instances you had in Musician to these types. Thanks for the very useful suggestion.

Concert tour: Include /time/event

2008-04-07T20:19:53.0005Z

This type should probably include /time/event which will give it start/end dates. This shouldn't break any backward compatibility so in theory it can just be added.

Music Festival: Include /time/event

2008-04-07T20:18:31.0012Z

This type should probably include /time/event which will give it start/end dates. This shouldn't break any backward compatibility so in theory it can just be added.

Conductor: Just operas?

2008-04-06T21:43:38.0001Z

Ok, thanks! I think I got it now. :)

Conductor: Just operas?

2008-04-03T23:05:22.0000Z

Thanks for looking at this, Jaro. What happened here is that the person who designed the Opera schema wanted to note the conductor, and no one else has cared enough yet about other performances to link conductors to any other kind of performance.

The best way to go about this is to prototype a new Conductor type in your own domain and see how it works. For example, what properties will that type have, and what types will they expect? Please also join the music modeling interest group and/or the data modeling mailing list to get a good conversation going around the subject.

Conductor: Just operas?

2008-04-03T22:27:38.0005Z

It would be nice if the choices here weren't so scarse. How about all the other pieces of classical music that need conductors?

How do I add to this template?

Musical Track: Films and Musical Tracks.

2008-02-18T18:54:44.0007Z

I'm not sure what you mean about "picturisation performance". Are you looking for information about specific musical productions within a film? We can capture film-wide information about choreographers, etc. currently (through the "other crew" property), but if a film has multiple choreographers, there is no way to say "choreographer A worked on scenes X, Y, and Z" and "choreographer B worked on scenes Q and R". Is that the level of detail you're looking for?

Musical Track: Films and Musical Tracks.

2008-02-15T15:51:35.0002Z

I just found "Music Video" schema through gordon's profile. I think it is still being developed.

Musical Track: Films and Musical Tracks.

2008-02-15T15:45:26.0008Z

As jeff pointed out, other movies can also benefit from the "musical track" property, which is what I was thinking about. But having a separate schema such as "Picturisation Performance" (or whatever) will allow us to capture more data about every such performance like the actors, choreographers, type of performance, etc. as mentioned above.

There are already tons of such (bollywood) performances data using the standard "musical track" schema. Are there any tools for batch 'fixing'?

Also, how is data about music videos being captured currently? I did not find any schema for this data. Can both of these use a common schema? Eg: There is this Celine Dion's "My Heart Goes On" music video which has Celine singing and interspersed with Titanic movie clippings. So, the film Titanic needs to be connected to this music video, or not?

Musical Track: Films and Musical Tracks.

2008-02-14T21:38:17.0007Z

What about just adding a "musical track" property to the film type itself? It seems to me that this value would apply not only to Bollywood films, but certainly also to movie musicals, and even to non-musicals, since soundtracks do not reliably contain all the songs that were played (either as part of the film or as background) in the movie.

Musical Track: Films and Musical Tracks.

2008-02-14T20:55:53.0007Z

You could easily create such a schema in your own private domain ;)

What to call it though...Picturisation Performance? Bollywood is a generic name applied to 'masala' movies, but is that the best term? There are various regional Indian language-based film industries, all creating this type of film.

It would have to include:

film, composers, lyricists, playback singers, actors, choreographers, type of performance (duet, group, crowd, solo?), musical style, dance style, length of performance, language (spoken), language (sung) and releases (eg music video collections,

Musical Track: Films and Musical Tracks.

2008-02-14T11:18:20.0005Z

Almost all Indian movies have 6+ musical tracks in them. Currently Musical Tracks can be grouped only under Musical Albums but not Films. In fact, one of the popular method for searching Bollywood musical tracks is to use their favourite actor names while querying, so they can get songs from movies their actors acted in.

So can we have a schema where this type of a relationship between a film and a musical track is captured?

Music: Musician type?

2007-08-29T02:42:38.0000Z

This is interesting, Cedric, and it seems useful. The instrument played property is definitely more helpful here than on Musical Artist. What other properties did you have in mind?

Music: Musician type?

2007-08-25T01:38:28.0012Z

For mw's consideration:

I've created a type in my personal domain called "Musician" which includes types "Person" and "Musical Artist." This type requires that its topics be individual persons, but we can also provide greater detail about their personal identity. Individuals can also be tied to the instruments they play (a property I've also added). Let me know what you think.

Music: New type for Music theory

2007-07-28T00:30:20.0216Z

Thanks for the suggestion, Ron. Generally, a type is something that an instance can be, well, an instance of. So I think you’re onto something interesting here, but maybe not those specific types. What would it mean to be a Music? I think more specific types are in order; an analytical method would be a good example, as would things like the Musical scale and Musical chord which we already have.

I would suggest that you try prototyping types based on instances that seem to need them, to you, and see what properties they need. For example, on finding an analytical method, create a type, make the particular method an instance thereof, and see what properties are needed to flesh it out.

Thanks.

Music: New type for Music theory

2007-07-26T20:49:24.0007Z

and shouldn't there be a "type" "Music," so that subparts, such as the music theory topic, can be related to the domain?

Music: New type for Music theory

2007-07-26T20:38:27.0011Z

It would be useful to have a type for music theory to identify definitions of music terminology, analytical methods, etc.

Music: classical music

2007-07-23T23:00:58.0007Z

Good point, Ron. This is directly analogous to the problem with albums and tracks; tracks aren’t directly credited if they are on an album entirely by the same artist. There’s a tension between redundant data and confusing lacunæ that we need to resolve.

It would be nice to have a way to be able to say “this property instance gets its apparent value from this other property instance by these rules, unless someone gives a (different) specific value.” However, the best way to say that—or even if there’s a good way to say that—is something we’re still figuring out.

In the meantime, I would suggest not giving composer information for sub-compositions (movements, etc.); even if we don’t figure out how to do inherited property values, it will be straightforward to automagically add composer information to all sub-compositions.

Music: classical music

2007-07-22T16:23:46.0007Z

This is very important to have "works" with subparts. I've spent some time editing Harry Partch compositions as a practice exercise and the works still show up on the homepage as "Songs composed" and the subparts list as independent works. In order for this to work accurately for this type of music, this categorization will definitely need to be fixed. It would also seem that some relationality would be useful, as well, since when doing this work I have to re-enter a lot of information for each piece, esp. the composer name, etc. Shouldn't the database be able to pull in this info for me?

Music: Multiple disc albums

2007-07-18T01:41:18.0007Z

OK—take a look at /music/package on sandbox and see what you think. It will take a little bit for me to populate some sample data, but the idea is that an album like The Wall would have a track list as well as packages (discs) that contain specific tracks. This can also model LP or cassette sides. The Joe Jackson album would have one release with 2 LP sides, and another release with 6 45s (or even 12 45 sides). This is much more analogous to the next-generation MusicBrainz approach as well.

For most single-disc CD albums, the packages could be implicit, or could be co-typed with the album, or made explicit separate topics, depending on how pedantic or thorough fans of the artist want to be.

Music: Multiple disc albums

2007-07-11T20:39:53.0000Z

Thanks for the feedback. Don’t forget about the Musical Release type, though. In your Springsteen example, the 5-LP set would be a Multipart Album with five parts. The 3-CD set would be a Musical Release, a release of the 5-LP album. We most likely need a multipart release to correspond with Multipart Album for cases like this. Similarly, I’m the Man would be a Musical Album with a multipart release consisting of 6 parts. (FWIW, MusicBrainz isn’t locked into CDs, either; it’s just that most of their data comes from people putting things into their computers, which means almost entirely CDs. Their next-generation schema is going to be much more flexible on this point, and I’m trying to anticipate it here.)

Music: classical music

2007-07-11T20:36:39.0007Z

Al, check out the Composition type, which can include or be part of another composition. Does this help? We can also get more detailed, making a concerto, a symphony, a sonata, all separate types, including Composition and having movements as their parts. There is also an Arrangement for distinguishing significantly different takes on the same composition.

Music: Multiple disc albums

2007-07-11T01:27:41.0007Z

Chris, I saw the email about the proposed "Multipart Album", and to be honest, I think it's not the right approach at all. The whole "multipart" thing is actually a feature of a release, not of an album. Think about Springsteen's live album "1975-85". It was released as a 5-LP vinyl set, and also as a 3-CD set. Albums that were originally released as 2-LP sets were later released as single CDs. Or, to use an incredibly esoteric example, Joe Jackson's "I'm the Man" album was released as a single vinyl album, and also as a boxed set of 6 45rpm singles. Don't box yourself into the idea that the Music domain is only for creating CD discographies. That was MusicBrainz' mistake.

Music: Proposed changes on sandbox

2007-07-10T03:10:40.0007Z

The changes described above have now been made on the main Freebase site. I couldn’t find any Freebase applications that used these properties, but please let us know if anything breaks.

One addition to these changes is that a Composition may be recorded as a Musical Album ( e.g. , a symphony that shows up as multiple tracks on the album).

Music: Proposed changes on sandbox

2007-06-29T03:46:49.0012Z

If you care about data in the music domain, please take a moment to look at it on sandbox .

The main change here is the new Composition type, which has Composer , Lyricist,/i>, and Recorded Versions properties. A Song is now just a kind of Composition (by way of an included type).

A composition can include another composition—so a symphony might include its movements, a rock opera can include its songs, an operatic cycle can include its operas. These different semantically-meaningful types can be added as the data is fleshed out.

This would affect a couple of other domains, too; a musical would be both a Play and a Composition , with the composer and lyricist using the Composition properties, and with its songs being compositions themselves included in the larger work; similarly for operas. (I do realize that there is a connotative difference between a librettist and a lyricist, but that is more a matter of era than anything else; which does Tommy have?)

Another new type is Arrangement , which is, like Song , itself a Composition , but which is also an arrangement of some other composition. This allows us to distinguish between covers of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” and Bob Dylan’s.

I am posting this same message to the developers’ mailing list; please reply with comments here.

Music: Multiple disc albums

2007-06-13T01:10:36.0006Z

Currently, the discs should be kept separate. This is confusing, it’s true, but given the currently model of only Musical Album and Musical Release , it’s the best option. However, we will be incorporating the next-generation MusicBrainz model of having “packages” that may contain other packages, e.g. a two-disc release that contains two discs, each of which has a track list. The details of implementing that model in Freebase are still being worked out, however.

Music: Multiple disc albums

2007-06-12T04:23:48.0011Z

Should we be flagging multiple disc entires for merging?

Example: 2 topics currently exist as "Musical Album":
Grateful Dead / Steal Your Face (disc 1)
Grateful Dead / Steal Your Face (disc 2)

Now, in my mind, this is one album. It's initial release was 2 vinyl discs, but I think it should reside in one topic.

Opinions?

Music: classical music

2007-06-07T03:13:48.0006Z

Need to also recognize that many classical works are really sets of works (movements), for example, a Concerto typically has three movements (fast, slow, fast). "Song" has always been problematic for almost anything except American popular/folk music.
I think it is necessary to think of multiple artists associated with a particular work, rather than a primary or secondary artist. The composer is the artist who produces the composition as a concept recorded on some medium, usually paper, the performer or performers realize that conception. Each performance is a different work, this is true in most music, but is the central point in classical music. So for example, to tie both comments together, think of a performance of "The Goldberg Variations" of J.S. Bach, versus the same work performed by Daniel Barenbohm. (very different) In some circumstances, we want to think of Bach as the primary and in others either Gould or Barenbohm.
There is no question that the current ontologies for music are seriously flawed.

Music: Modeling single releases

2007-05-30T05:44:02.0006Z

I'd vote for alternate releases in cases like that, where they would all be considered "single" releases of "Said She Was a Dancer". In general, if a short-form release doesn't have its own title independent of the A-song being released, it goes in as one of the single releases of that song.

To facilitate this (and for other reasons), I would like to suggest that one of the attributes of the "Musical Release" object be Format, where the choices for format would be things like "12-inch vinyl, 33 1/3 rpm", "Compact Disc", "Cassette", "8-track tape", etc.

Other attributes that belong in Musical Release are Catalog Number and Mono/Stereo/Quad.

Music: Modeling single releases

2007-05-18T05:26:47.0011Z

An album is sometimes released with additional tracks later; we consider that a release of the album rather than a new album. So here’s an interesting question: when a particular song is released as a single in different variants (that is, with different other songs), are those different albums, or are they different releases of the same album?
As a concrete example, Jethro Tull’s song “Said She Was a Dancer,” from Crest of a Knave , was released as a 7" single with “Dogs in the Midwinter” as the B side, as a 7" single with “The Waking Edge” as the B side, as a cassingle with both songs, and as a 12" single with “Dogs in the Midwinter,” “Down at the End of Your Road,” and “Too Many Too.” Do we create a single album with three alternate releases, or four separate albums with different track lists?

Music: Description formatting suggestion

2007-05-11T21:29:13.0006Z

Formatting of articles edited with the Freebase WYSIWYG editor is still a little wobbly. Sorry about that; please bear with us.

Music: Description formatting suggestion

2007-05-11T00:19:32.0006Z

Just a formatting design suggestion for the descriptions of the Domain/Types.

The bolded 'Properties' and on this page 'Types' should have more clear line spaces above than below.

Ex.

the Music domain. Some such have been inappropriately imported where they were not tagged correctly in MusicBrainz; please report these or un-type them as Musical Albums or their performers or authors as Musical Artists.

Types

Musical Artists are bands or individuals who perform or record Musical Albums or Musical Tracks. An artist may be a Musical Group Member and have a Musical Group Membership connecting them to another Musical Artist.

Music: classical music

2007-05-08T00:58:14.0006Z

Lots of thoughts about this! Traditionally, the primary artist of a classical work is the composer, with the performer secondary, but this was necessitated by space on the spine of an LP or CD, and the necessity of a store shelving an album in a single place. Later, databases and music players only had an “artist” field to fill with a singular value.
Freebase definitely enables a much richer ontology, but getting it right will take a bit of thought. Please share any of your thoughts here or on the developers mailing list. We will also be getting together with some folks from MusicBrainz and other interested parties to grovel over the concepts of music representation within the next month, and you should see some interesting developments on Freebase resulting from that.

Music: classical music

2007-05-05T17:10:59.0006Z

Any thoughts about organizing and adding classical music-specific typing? Typically, the work or composition is used as a primary organizing principle rather than songs, tracks, albums etc. And song has a specific connotation in classical music versus its broader meaning in popular music. The songs listed for say, composer John Adams, are not songs in the technical sense.

Having said that, I don't know of a readily available data source that could be used to populate such a scheme. I suppose Wikipedia has lists of compositions by composer.

Music: links to venues

2007-04-11T19:27:02.0006Z

If by subtopics, you mean topics of different types, the answer is no. We looked at supporting that but it makes things pretty complicated. That said, you can type any topic with a type called 'Musical venue', so your instances of 'public arenas', 'national parks', etc... would simply have multiple types associated. For instance: Madison Square Garden might be a 'Sports Facility' but also a 'Musical Venue'. Make sense?

Music: links to venues

2007-04-03T20:59:53.0012Z

Is there any way to link to multiple topics under one heading? Like, if you had a "Venues Played" subtopic could it link to 'Public Arenas,' 'National Parks,' and 'Artist Tours,' or does each one have to have its own subtopic?