Let's face it -- Genres STINK for classifying music, and especially for the Empeg. "Rock" applies to thousands of songs in my collection, sub-genres of Rock like "Heavy Metal" and "Alternative" have so many gray areas that it's impractical to use genres to get the kind of songs you want to hear at any given time.

Furthermore, searching for specific artists/titles throws away the whole idea of using shuffle play and getting "surprise" songs that you want to hear, but just aren't thinking of at that moment. That's the magic of having an Empeg!

So... Using keywords or metadata, and searching through them with the Empeg, has been discussed in the past, and I dont think the idea has gotten as much attention as it should. It could be such a great way to focus your Empeg's "rotation" to exactly what you want to hear at that time, just by keying in a few keywords.

Basically the idea I have in my head (and that has been hinted at before) is this:

1. On your PC, you add short descriptive keywords to your MP3's, which would probably be stored in the ID3 tag.

2. You Emplode them, and those keywords are associated with each song in the Empeg database.

3. You call up one of the player's Search screens and start typing in a keyword. I could see maybe 100 keywords for my collection, so fuzzy matching would probably require only 2-3 keypresses.

4. Hit a button to add that keyword to a "search phrase" of sorts.

5. Repeat process to expand or restrict your search. The whole time, the number of matching tunes could be displayed in the corner. You could allow "AND" or "OR" to make it even more powerful, but to avoid odd things happening with 3 or more search terms, it'd probably have to be limited to ANDing or ORing the whole keyword phrase.

6. Hit a button which "executes your search" so to speak, playing the songs that match the keywords.

Right now, you have to construct "canned" playlists in Emplode which anticipate a set of songs you think you might want to hear in the future. When you dump some more tunes on, you have to maintain these playlists. Isn't it easier to just add some attributes to those files, and then filter on those attributes? Keywords could describe an attribute of the instrumentation (heavy, loud, symphonic, accoustic), the tempo (fast, slow), the artist (female, group), or anything else about the song. You could even use genre names, or your favorite artists as keywords if it suits you.

I'd like to hear comments on this idea. I think this would be so flexible, and after thinking about some of the possible pitfalls, I still think it can be done and made usable.

-Tony
MkII #554

Two things:

1) Why isn't this post in the Wish List forum?

2) I'm pretty sure that Emplode lets you type any text you want into the Genre field (you're not limited to the list built into ID3 tags), so you could theoretically fill them out any way you liked and do your searches on the Genre field right now, with no software changes.

___________
Tony Fabris

I'm talking about distinct attributes, one or more of which can be associated with each song as keywords, that can then be searched in combination. Unless there's some feature I'm not aware of, the genre tag can't do this, it can only hold one "value." The keyword system I'm talking about would be a set of attributes associated with each song. This would allow filtering based on characteristics of a song, not just one single field.

Here's an example. With my Empeg right now, I could create a playlist for all my instrumentals. And a playlist for all my slow songs. And a playlist for all my songs from British artists. But what if I want to hear the slow instrumentals from British artists? This would be a "union" operation on playlists, sort of, but it is better thought of (and implemented) as attributes of each song. Now for each "attribute" I can use them alone, or in combination. The OR would allow me to say "give me all the British songs, instrumentals, and slow songs in my collection."

Depending on one's taste, one can set up keywords for topics of songs (cars, women, weapons of mass destruction,) or any of the things I mentioned in my first post (tempo, instrumentation, something about the artist...) Then you could combine them for union or intersection operations to get exactly the songs you want to hear.

So, I don't think the Genre tag is sufficient. This keyword system would allow an arbitrary number of attributes to be associated with each tune. Genre is just one.

I wanted to get some feedback before I posted this in the wish list forum officially, but I guess it should have just gone there to begin with. I'll re-post if this sounds like something someone other than me wants. :)



-Tony
MkII #554

Edited by yn0t_ on 01/04/01 02:08 AM.

But what if I want to hear the slow instrumentals from British artists? This would be a "union" operation on playlists, sort of,...

<pedantic>You mean "intersect"</pedantic>

I'll re-post if this sounds like something someone other than me wants. :)

Sounds like it can be really useful.

Borislav

PS. why is it so bloody hard to but angle brackets in posts?!

Edited by borislav on 01/04/01 05:55 AM.

D'oh! Yes, intersect. Next time I'll have my Venn diagrams out for my posts to the Empeg BBS. :)

-Tony
MkII #554

I see what you're getting at.

Wendy filters will almost do what you're asking for, although in order to do it on the fly, you'd need to be able to activate more than one Wendy filter at a time, which I'm not sure is possible. It would be possible to set up combinations ahead of time (make a separate Wendy filter for slow+instrumental+jazz for example), but I don't know if you can activate more than one Wendy filter at a time on-the-fly. Hugo/Mike/Rob?

(PS: Maybe I shouldn't talk about upcoming 1.1 features on the BBS? But Wendy filters are a feature that's already been discussed publicly. I just wondered if they would do what he was asking for.)

___________
Tony Fabris

Hmmm. My understanding of Wendy filters (as originally described) is that it's just a logical "NOT" of a playlist. You set up a filter and it blocks those songs so that your girlfriend doesn't find out about your "Sounds of Porno" collection. Not nearly as useful as a keyword-based system if you ask me. I wish I had suggested this a few months ago (before 1.1 development was frozen) but maybe it's something to think about for future incarnations.

I'll do some more thinking about this and post a more formal Wishlist type thing soon, after I sort out some of the details in my own head, and read up a little more on ID3v2. In the meantime, anyone else think this idea makes sense? The idea started with me thinking about this thread, and then thinking about an old shareware program I had once used which implemented keyword-based searches of browser bookmarks in a very intelligent way. You typed in keywords of those pages. For instance, I might type in "empeg" to get all my Empeg bookmarks, and "bbs" to narrow it down to just this one.

If ID3v2 doesn't have any fields that make this work, I think the comment field could be used to contain comma or semicolon-delimited keywords for this purpose. Then it'd just be a question of having the empeg yank them out into the database and make the search based on these keywords happen. Hmmmm... Anyway, more thoughts on this are welcome, I think this would be a home run, personally.

-Tony
MkII #554

My understanding of Wendy filters (as originally described) is that it's just a logical "NOT" of a playlist.

The Wendy filters are much more flexible than that. Now I realize I have to shut up because I shouldn't give anything away. Suffice it to say that what you're talking about is the sort of thing Wendy filters can do. I'm not sure if you'd be able to do as much as you wanted "on the fly", though.

___________
Tony Fabris

If it's any consolation - this would be an excellent feature I think.

Searching and catagorizing songs in the empeg is going to be a difficult problem to solve, but easy to describe issue, and one that, I think , is of paramount importance, esepcially when you consider that we could have nearly 10,000 songs on a single empeg. I've mentioned this before....

Ultimately I think that we'd all like features like that but the priority needs to be 1.1, etc.......

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul Haigh, Reg. 4120
(mk1) 6GB, Blue, 00254
(mk2) 12GB, Red, 00357

[wishlist]
I would like to see emplode import more of the fields available in IDv2. As arduous as the re-classification (and then re-burning) of my collection would be, it would be great to be able to use these fields for search functions.

[/wishlist]

____________________
Murray 06000047

I agree that keyword search (with logical operators) would be most useful. I often have trouble deciding which genre to assign to a track (say, some of Walter/Wendy Carlos tracks from Kubrick's Clockwork Orange: classical, soundtrack, electronic...?)

BTW, several 'jukebox' MP3 organizer programs have a feature similar to this.

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Couldn't this be done by setting up a series of massive "Keyword" playlists?

--Glenn

Couldn't this be done by setting up a series of massive "Keyword" playlists?

For all logical combinations of 100 keywords you'll need 2^2^100 playlists...

Borislav

Nope, only one playlist per keyword. Boolian math between playlists causes the generation of a temporary list. Perhaps one that could be saved, or not. This way the keywords are not properties of the music itself. That is a good thing. We should be able to share playlists, even if we can't share music. (but that's another ball of worms) --Glenn

First off, I disagree with your statement that keeping the playlist separate from the music is a good idea. Let's say you have a 36GB Empeg and you fill it up with your music, but keep your original rips on a desktop HD (or CDR's) for safe keeping (smart move!). Three months later you have some kind of hard disk failure or corruption which causes a loss of your files. If the keywords are embedded in the ID3 tag (like Artist, Title, etc. currently are) then you just transfer the files. If not, then you spend HOURS re-creating your playlists with minute mouse movements in Emplode. This is the whole reason Emplode imports Artist, Title, Genre, Source, and Year from the ID3. I just wanted to take it one step further and have it use some more ID3 information, and allow them to be used in combination instead of just selecting on one.

I also don't see how sharing Empeg playlists would help anyone. No two of us have the same music, and playlists are just pointers to FIDs, right? FIDs aren't globally unique... I don't think sharing of Empeg playlists is feasible or even useful.

Beyond the fact that the keywords are safely stored in the MP3 file, you have so much more flexibility. Currently you can do an "OR" (union) operation with "search by" results (append), but you can't do it with playlists (at least I don't think so. Selecting a playlist still replaces the currently playing songs, right?) An "AND" (intersect) operation simply doesn't exist for either playlists or searches. I thought I heard they were going to add "append playlist" to 1.1, but that doesn't solve the problem of when you want to select songs that have two or more properties in combination.

Here's another example. You've got 500 rap tunes, 300 rock tunes, and an overlap of 50 that would be considered both (Run DMC / Aerosmith's "Walk This Way", the Judgement Night soundtrack, etc.) With playlists, in order to hear this intersection of rock and rap, you'd have to make a separate playlist for all those songs. With what I'm talking about, just key in "rock AND rap" and you've got it. Then you're free to combine any other keywords you're using to produce a large number of playlists dynamically.

I really started thinking about this when I realized that categorizing my collection by genre was not only time-consuming, but ineffective. You're forced to set up your mood playlists ahead of time, rather than constructing them on the fly by giving a few attributes or keywords. With this kind of setup, you could tag a song as "rock", "rap", "heavy", "fast", "loud", "live", "accoustic", "instrumental" or whatever.

By the way, I realize the value of playlists, and am not suggesting the playlist structure go away. I realize that there are many times where you'll want to keep a group of tunes together in a single list, and not worry about them sharing a source or keyword or artist. But I think adding this flexible search feature would be a big win.

And seriously, all the drag and dropping of playlists in Emplode is bound to cause some RSI... :)

-Tony
MkII #554

... But I think adding this flexible search feature would be a big win.

Amen

/Michael

Nope, only one playlist per keyword. Boolian math between playlists causes the generation of a temporary list.

OK, I thought you meant that you can do this already with the current playlists.

This way the keywords are not properties of the music itself. That is a good thing. We should be able to share playlists, even if we can't share music.

You need to store this metadata somewhere when not on the empeg and have emplode automatically pick it up, for the reasons Tony gave below. A standard place already exists - ID3v2 tags. Nothing stops you from sharing that data - CDDB already does it for most tags (I just wish they included the year).

Borislav

It dosen't really matter weither they are called keywords or playlists or tags. In database lingo its all metadata. Fields of info in a record. One type of record is created for a tune. A tune record contains all the info unique to the tune. Another type is the playlist. A playlist record is just a way to key in on a particular subset of tunes. Its just a list of FID's. So a playlist for each keyword is already possible. The only thing needed to make this wish come true, is a few more subroutines in both the player and emplode. No changes to the format of the database at all.

Needed subroutines would be:
In emplode:
A way to see all the playlists (keywords) that a tune is associated with. Then a way to add playlists to those already shown. (choose from existing or create new.) It would be a bonus if this could be done from a keywords tag in the music itself.
In the player: a way to do boolean cross matches among playlists (ROCK+ORCHESTRA) to generate a temporary playlist. A neat way to do this on the player would be to scroll thru the subset of playlists designated as keywords. Turn Rob's knob to scroll, punch it to select/deselect, hit the top button to abandon, bottom to commit.

One thing, I should have said was "Its impractical to have keywords in the tunes." Some music formats just don't have tags. Even if every tune format had tags, its almost a given that they would not be stored in a compatable form. Emplode maintaince gets to be a real problem when all the differences have to be tracked. Heck, mp3's alone have problems related to different formats of V1 and V2 tags. I wouldn't count on Emplod being able to rebuild a database from tags.

--glenn
(as I read this back for the last time, I realize I've had too much soda pop today.)

A tune record contains all the info unique to the tune

Another problem is that most songs cannot be classified in a single genre. To cater for this, I have the most prominent genre in the genre field. All others are in the comment field. I'd love to search and select on these . . .

Henno
mk2 6 nr 6