Music Rating
Friends that know me well will know that I have a ridiculously complicated, obsessive way of organising my mp3s. I have tried to explain the madness. If there is anyone else out there that is as strange as me, you might like to steal some ideas for managing your music.. but I doubt anyone will.
I can explain how it came about. I was using itunes with my ipod, and i had to reinstall the program, or windows, or something, but was horrified that I had lost all the stars that you use to rate the music. I was also annoyed that when i switched computers, the stars didn't transfer.
So I decided, that I could just write a number in the comment field, which would be permanent over several computers, and give me the advantage of being able to rate 1-10 or 1-100 or whatever I wanted.
So I started with 1 digit rating from 0-9.
I soon realised that there are many songs that I view as being great classic, quality songs, but that I don't often want to listen to. There are also some musically poor songs that just get in your head. So i introduced a quality 0-9 rating in addition to the overall rating.
The overall rating would dictate how often the song tended to pop up in my playlists.
I decided I also needed a happy rating. This would also go from 0-9.
I needed a way to differenciate the ratings from each other, and so I introduced the brackets.
8 H(6) Q[5]
the first number is the overall rating
H(6) shows that it is fairly happy
Q[5] demonstrates that it is of average quality.
I could then create smart playlists finding happy songs that I particularly like. Happy songs can be annoying if you are not in a happy mood, so I could do the reverse.
I could make a smart playlist to play the quality songs that I hadn't listened to for ages.
Then we can start to throw in some other ratings.
Many songs in my collection are guitar based, but I often find that I am either in a guitar mood, or not. So a guitar rating was introdu . G<1> demonstrates that the guitar features some guitar, but that it is incidental to the track, and G<9> would probably include an amazing Hendrix solo or something.
*7* would indicate a chilled-out song (although I don't like the term) I was thinking of freezers with the stars!
I also created a x6x category for songs that are good to listen to, erm, in bed.
Then we can start making all kinds of combinations of songs. Make a playlist of songs that are Happy 6-9, and combine it with ones that have lots or little guitar etc.
I added some additions, H(d) is for songs that are truly depressing, or H(M) for moody songs. There is a difference! Moody songs might be good if you are in a moody dark kind of mood. Some Massive Attack has this rating in my collection. You might think “why would I want to rate a song as depressing, I am not going to make a depressing song playlist” True, but you can automatically omit these songs from popping up on other playlists and spoiling the mood.
We can throw in an AirG rating, for songs where you just have to grab the nearest tennis racket and pretent you are onstage.
I added a B~5 rating for songs with a good bassline. I like my bass, and am particularly fond of this rating.
I later added a BTS and Drms rating. For strong BEATS and good DRUMS respectively. The beats refers more to songs that might have a consistently distinct beat. This might be important if a song is chilled out, but has a strong beat over it. If you want chilled out music to listen to late at night, you might not want a strong beat over it, for example. Drms is more a rating if it has a great rhythm to it. Many songs might have both ratings. Blue Monday (New Order) has great Drms. Outsiders (Franz Ferdinand) has a consistent beat, but I wouldn't say it had great drumming. The interesting rhythm is a combination of the different instruments together.
This is perhaps part of the reason I had a f<> rating for how funky the song is. Some of these ratings are quite vague, but this was started to address my penchant for funk – and was an indication of the funkiness of the bassline and if it had a funky rhythm.
Perhaps as a consequence of trying to find good songs to run to at the gym, i created mv8 for motivating songs. I later felt compelled to add a mv9 for those just a bit more motivating and mv7 for those a bit less. mv1-5 do not exist.
The standard empty comment field for a song is:
H() G{} Q[] f<> ** xx [Scott*]
or an example of a completed comment would be:
9 H(8) G{5} Q[6] f<4> *1* x1x mv9 airG BTS B~3 JMP TPP [Scott*]
(Primal Scream – Rocks)
This is one of the longest comments – they are not all like this!
Once a song is rated it is automatically put into all the corresponding automatically updated playlists
Some other terms have crept in
FTT indicated a song that you just can't help but tapping your foot to.
JMP – good for jumping up and down to.
LYR – great lyrics
@ - lots of attitude
D^ great for dancing to (not just dance music – but a song I would actually consider dancing to)
Sum – A great summer song
A:M morning song
P:M evening song
zzz – good for falling asleep to
Pia – a piano focussed song
CLSS – classical music – so that they don't all mix together
+H(5) for songs that are not necessarily happy, but are good for lifting the mood. eg. Marving Gaye – What's Going On
Sun – “Easy Like Sunday Morning” type songs
Drv – Good Driving Music
BZZ – bizarre songs -
CVRS – Songs that have been covered.
Live L7 – Live indicates it is a live version, and L0-9 to determine the quality of the recording. It can be good to remove the live versions that might come up if you are trying to a listen to an album (they are likely to have a similar rating, and so might play consecutively)
Ghits – for when you have a greatest hits album, but you don't need to keep it in your collection with the original albums, but it can be good to have a record of what was featured on the album, so you can just listen to the hits – good for when you haven't rated all the songs yet.
XXX – Parental Advisory (Lryrics my mum wouldn't approve of)
ACST – acoustic
Ins – Instrumental
SX – Saxophone
STRNG – Strings
Non music comments – comedy, podcast, radio, audiobook
Example playlists:
Mv – not angry
mv happy 6-9
Recently rated 6-9
x9-4x *9-4* B~
Why do none of these have vowels? – so that you can distinguish the rating in the comment field from song titles etc, with the same letters. If I typed DRIVE I would get Drive by REM, which is not a good driving song in my opinion.
Why do I have [Scott*] - so that I can find songs that do not have a comment. If anyone I know has any of my tracks, I can immediately find songs I like on their itunes! Why does it have a * - to distinguish from Jill Scott or Scott Walker – who I was named after! Why the brackets – I don't know, but once you start you are stuck with your system!
I find that the genre category is too vague. Albums typically have the same genre for the whole album, which is rarely accurate. I have added some genres myself but these are suffixed with a * to indicate that it is my own categorisation.
I have so far rated 2722 songs, or 8.3 days, 16GB of music. It probably takes me about 10 seconds for each rating. That must be a lot of wasted time... 3.2 days of wasted time... But I do save hours reaching into my pocket to switch to a different track, because I don't like the one playing. I have done most of my favourite music now, and so the whole process will probably slow down now.
I occasionally change the rating, but they usually stick. You could view all of this as a waste of time, but I can always quickly find several hours of music that suits my mood. I think that we will be sticking with computer files for quite some time, and I hope that my system will last for around 10 years at least.
Clever idea or truly stupid!?!
