Browsing your collection

If you have a large collection, it is important to structure it a bit. You can't browse your collection by art work (I remember my favourite albums in general by their cover) so a consistent database is needed.
If you like cover art as a way to present your collection: look here

You have 4 ways to browse the collection:

 

Artist: see to it that they are spelled uniformly. This is a hand job as FreeDB  is indeed open for all who want to contribute (an option missing in the HF) so what is conceptually the same is often spelled different.

You can have as interpreters:

• Gideon Kremer
• Kremer / Argerich
• Martha Argerich

So you will find this great violin player under the G and under the K.
Now if you change Gideon Kremer into Kremer, Gideon you have him (alphabetically) grouped together in the list of artist so you can see with works are performed by him. But if you do the same trick with Argerich, she will appear under the A or under the M but in the list you won't see her grouped with the K of Kremer.
So if you want to know the works performed by Martha Argerich you should use the Search List.
What is missing is an option to add multiple performers to a song.

 

Composer: if FreeDB  supplies the composer (most of the time this field is “unknown”) often the name of the composer  appears in the field labeled “Artist”. As a composition in classical music is mostly a one mans affair you don't have the problems as with multiple combinations of artists. But you do have to edit most of the entries manually.

 

Genre: according to FreeDB  the genre is “classical” most of the time. Not very specific.
I started with the form: sonata, symphony, etc. but in a large collection this is not very specific either. So I ended up with basically using the combination of instruments like piano – solo, piano – duo, piano – trio, etc.

 

Album: In case of classical music I made an separate album for each composition.

 

So now I can browse my collection by Artist

Next (>) shows me all the albums (compositions in my case) performed by Kremer/Argerich.

 

By Composer

Showing the compositions (albums)

If you think I like Beethoven you haven't seen my Schubert yet.

 

By songs so each individual movement of any composition (tracks)

 

By genre

 

And of course by album

 

You can get information about the library by activating Information (F1 on the keyboard)

 

It shows you that it could become quite big so tagging it properly is important.