I'm sure I will get yelled at on many accounts for posting this, but I'll post it to see what people think.

I am not using my empeg to its fullest potential. Largely, because I haven't tried all the software (which I plan to do, relentlessly, starting January 2005). But also because I'm not sure the feature I need has been implemented yet. It goes something like this:

Starts by having all your MP3s on the empeg in playlists that allow you to easily find artist, album, or song. That part's done. But I'm interested in quick access to playlists based on "mood" and other song attributes, easily accessible, but without having to create duplicate song entries in numerous additional playlist structures.

A way to do this may be "attribute files" that can be appended to individual MP3 files, similar to the lyrics files. Attribute files could contain data fields for any number of ways you want to organize your music; genre, mood, instrumentation, texture, key (tonal center), major/minor, tempo, etc. The files would contain data similar to the Allmusic mood categories you see assigned to an artist or album, and then some. And since they are separate files, they could be distributed like the lyric files. Sure, my attribute decision may not match yours, but it might give you a start. And since they are embedded into the MP3 file like a bunch of extra ID3 tags, an extension of the standard empeg search functionality (by year, artist, album, genre, etc) could be used.

I'm not going to ask if this already exists, because I need to read the documentation for the various empeg software as my civic RTFM duty. But... how does this sound? To me, it would be ideal. I essentially only choose music to hear based on attributes such as mood, instrumentation, and tempo; sometimes combinations of attributes. And songs could be cross referenced using so many different attributes that it could really build a powerful way to access your music intuitively and quickly.

Should I make this my next project after the buttons are done? Or should I just manually replicate my entire playlist structure six or seven times, each arranged by a different attribute?

PS: An insane extended feature would be a "rigidity" setting, specifying how strictly the search results should adhere to the query. An example from a recent listening scenario: I wanted to hear serious songs that were just voice and one other instrument (this specifically excludes all my They Might Be Giants voice and accordion songs). By hand selecting a mix of songs, I added a few that maybe had three instruments or maybe weren't entirely serious, which introduced variation within my current mood and prevented monotony. A "rigidity" setting, coupled with a whole pile of rules for how to "be less rigid" could automatically introduce as much or as little variation as you'd like. Maybe you start off only wanting to hear minor key thick textured metal, but the empeg throws in some moderately textured punk rock because you told it to be less rigid. *That* would put a smile on my face.

PPS: (pss?) An even more insane extended feature would be "auto beat mixing" for techno tracks. This would be implemented by specifying for each track: BPM, intro and outtro times and durations, key, intro and outtro pitches (optional), genre, texture, etc. Also, have your MP3s trimmed to start exactly on the first beat of the song. Then, just specify a mix duration and a framework for the mix (ie: start slow - build to highpoint at middle - end slow). The built in intelligence table could choose songs to fit the framework and the, haha, built in realtime pitch shifting and time shifting could make it a smooth mix during playback. Oh, how nice it would be to quit my job and work only on this project.

Some very interesting ideas, here.

And BTW, it is PPS. "Post Post Script".

I don't think even Tony will yell at you for this

IIRC, you can introduce your own attributes into *1 files, but empeg SW will not do anything with them (I think I learned that by making a typo somewhere, and it appeared in DB export; I am not sure, it was long ago). One of the problems with your wishlist (and I will not even touch mixing) is space and time needed to build empeg database from *1 files - we are already near the edge of usability for very large music collections. Further, simple probability-based mixing already there (in two different mechanisms - 'take x% from this playlist' and user-defined searches like 'top 40' or 'not played recently' (I could'n quickly find about the later in the FAQ, but it was discussed in this thread)) won't do for your 'rigidity' requirement: you don't want Swingle Singers in your 90% heavy metal list. You need particular attributes to be ranges of values, and list-building criteria to specify how far on each scale (and with what probability) one can go.

I am affraid there is little hope to implement your wishes in the current incarnation of empeg. The only way to achieve the desired functionality are clever playlists.

However, why not think a bit about generating such playlists automagically (either off-line or, even better, on the player itself; perhaps jEmplode could be a good place, with its soup handling). One of problems to solve would be where to keep additional attributes - IIRC, (j)Emplode communicates attributes with empeg in the terms of database, not individual files, so, say, adding another set of *2 files content of which does not go to the database does not seem to be an option.... Argh, I have forgotten so much about my toy's internals!

Anyway, interesting things to think a bit about.

I won't yell, but I will question:

How is mood-tagging every MP3 file any easier than just making a few mood playlists?

Another thing to consider is that you can put anything you want into the genre field. You could make all your genres into moods if you wanted.

Do wendy flags for moods and use a wendy filter to select the one you're in.

bonzi: Thanks for the specific references. I'll dig through the Programming section (which I've essentially never read in 2 years here) so I can learn what they all mean.

dbrashear: Ah, Wendy filters. That is a great idea. I'll dig into that before I go reorganizing my entire collection. Thanks.

Tony: Knowing my compulsion, it would be more than a few playlists. There are so many attributes that I like to sort by, it would potentially require a duplication of my entire database for each attribute. And sorting by multiple attributes would be nice too; though difficult using playlist structure.

When I started my initial tagging effort, I found that any text could be placed into the genre tag. I decided to stick to the most standard set of tags humanly possible incase I ever used a program that could sort by tags. I'd hate to have that program not recognize my custom tags.

But I saw somewhere (Tag&Rename new version release notes?) that some version of ID3 supports multiple genre tags, up to six I think. That would be great way to store attributes (using arbitrary text instead of a genre list) if the empeg could read them. But, then the attributes couldn't be shared like lyric files. If I'm going categorize all my songs, I might as well share the results.

Windy filters it is, but maybe a desktop music management program could use a feature like this. Ha, if I had this feature, I'd actually listen to music at home instead of just in the car.

Waaaaaait, I'll have to read about this Moodlogic stuff which I just found on the Dension pages linked from the other topic. Sure, it's building playlists offline (like the Jemplode soup idea mentioned earlier, which is a good idea!), but at least it's something.

MoodLogic: Search the Board for it; we discussed it some three years ago, but it doesn't seem anybody continued using it (I didn't, anyway). Of course, three years is lot of time, and perhaps they improved remarkably. If you try it, let us know.

Yes, MoodLogic implements your "requested features list" so closely, that when I was reading your first post, I was thinking that you were just asking for MoodLogic to be implemented on the Empeg. I thought "Hmmmm, I wonder why he's avoiding using the word 'MoodLogic.' Is it because he doesn't want to be attacked?" Perhaps you read about MoodLogic long ago and it stuck in your mind.

Anyway, MoodLogic with the Tivo Home Media Option lets you stream these sorts of auto-generated playlists to your TV. But HMO is a week substitute for your Empeg wired to your home stereo in lots and lots of other ways. (But I do both, because that Mood and BPM feature is really cool sometimes.)

But the MoodLogic people seem to have been missing in action for a long time.
I'm not sure their database gets updated too much any more, and their "coming soon" features haven't materialized in the past few years.

Still what have you got to lose by trying the free trial, especially if you have a Tivo, too. (Warning: their free trial period is really short, a week or so. So make sure you categorize all your stuff quickly so you can get a fair assessment.)

And as you pointed out, using this on your Empeg currently means auto-generating playlists a few times a week and then downloading them -- something I've never bothered with because (a) I can just do it over the Tivo when I'm at home, and (b) my Empeg isn't in my car right now.

Yes. ID3v2 can support multiple genres per track. I wish the empeg would support that feature, as it would make using it as a filter more useful. For example, if I want to listen to all rock stuff, I don't want to miss out on The Ramones because they are labelled as punk instead. On the other hand, I might want to just listen to punk, and I wouldn't really want to get Rush in that playlist. Right now, the only way to do that is to create multiple playlists, but that can get complicated. It'd be nice to be able to tag The Ramones as both punk and rock and tag Rush as both prog and rock.

I had the same (or similar) idea a while back and got many of the same responses (including the requisite Tony Fabris "it's fine the way it is" response ) Ultimately, I think this is an idea that some people like and others don't, and those type of features never happen, especially in EOL software. If we were writing our own, I think this type of classification and selection strategy would certainly be worth considering.

Yep, It's on my new Viao laptop too. It's limited to activating, Sony's term, 100 songs until you pop for full usage.

Moodlogic that is.

I'll admit to twisting this thread to my own purposes. I'd prefer multiple genres to mood, but I wouldn't say no to mood, either.

I'd love to see mutliple genre support as well. Of course we'd also need to see it in Tag editing software to make it most useful.

ID3V2.4 supports multiple genres within the single tag, delimited by null charcaters. My favorite Tag software, Dr.Tag, doesn't have an interface to make creating these easy. Anyone know if Tag&Rename handles this? (another program I have registered, but not installed right now).

Bruno

You could probably do most of what you want generating playlists offline with jEmplode and a custom-written plugin. Basically you want additional attributes stored with the MP3 in jEmplode, so you could create a custom format for the ID3 description field (which is stored in the DB), maybe something like:

g=23,45,34;m=12,98,45;t=45,67,86;b=120

g=Genre, m=Mood, t=Tone, s=bpm

Your plugin would have to map the id's (23,45,34) with Genre titles, like Punk Rock, Hard Rock, etc. It could then create custom playlists offline within jEmplode: enumerate through the song listings, genres (or other attributes) that match go into a new playlist. It would be nice to extend the data for the MP3 file, but this is the only way I can think of (right now) to store it both in the Empeg and jEmplode. You would probably have to also come up with a good way to write this data back out to the ID3 en masse, because you wouldn't want to type all that into every MP3 you own by hand.

Though I've mentioned it before, again I have to recommend MP3 Book Helper . It's just my opinion, but I like it better than Tag & Rename. I'm not sure if you can do the multiple Genre thing, but I could give it a try. Either way, the people developing BP3BH do updates to the software, and consider user requests very seriously. Oh, and it's free. Can't beat it for regular expression support, either.

(if mega multi replies like this are taboo, just slap me)

Tony:

Quote:
If we were writing our own, I think this type of classification and selection strategy would certainly be worth considering.

Yes, this is definately a "writing my own" idea. Though I know 0 about empeg programming, I still believe that "anyone can do anything if they try hard enough." Maybe I could make it happen ::shrugs::

music:
Thanks for the tips. I was almost about to be suckered in because it seemed to fit my idea so well. It had a number of my "attributes" already accounted for. Oh well, now we know to avoid it.

Bitt:

Quote:
I'd prefer multiple genres to mood

Amen, because you could put whatever text you want in there. Just have empeg / desktop software sort by "genre1", "genre2", "genre3" and let the user keep track of what those fields are. Or, let the user rename the fields!

bruno:

Quote:
Of course we'd also need to see it in Tag editing software to make it most useful.

I could have swore that Tag&Rename announced this feature recently, but couldn't find it on their website. According to some total stranger, multiple genre support is handled by ID3Tag-It.

cushman:
Awesome, thanks for the tip. I'll try it. And writing it to the ID3 tags might not be too hard because Tag&Rename is pretty great with regular expression parsing. Hey, it handled all the crazyness I threw at it.