Various iTunes questions

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Level 1

4 points

Various iTunes questions

(iTunes 11, Windows 7)

Just downloaded iTunes 11, and so far, I can't stand it. I'm willing to accept that this might simply be from lack of familiarity with the interface, so if anyone can help me with any of the following issues, I'd be much obliged.

1) Where is the "Composer" tab? I'm a professional (classical) musician, and I used this view ALL THE TIME in my old iTunes.

2a) When I click the "Artist" tab, it displays by "Album Artist." How do I get it to display by "Artist?"

2b) How do I get the "Artist" tab to display by "Artist," and not show every single song by that artist. Listing everything makes it take a LONG time to scroll down to "Zappa, Frank."

3) No matter what I do, the option for "Column Browser" is greyed out. How do I use this (old, but really useful) feature?

4) If I want to select a single song, there used to be a little box next to the title. I'd click it. Now, I seem to have to right-click, and then mouse down to "Check selection." Admittedly, not a huge deal, but I sure liked that little button.

5) Is there a way to view songs in an old-school list format? I realize that I might be the only person who prefers the list (I could care less about being able to see the album artwork while I listen to a song), but I did like it. I especially liked the column that told the date that I last played a song.

6) Not specific to iTunes 11 (this has been an issue with EVERY version I've ever used): I am a little OCD about the way I want to sort my music. I spend many, many hours sorting through my entire library and editing "Song Info" until it looks how I want it to. Short version: I can edit song info, and then when I play that song, iTunes often (not always, but often) automatically changes that info back to what it used to be. [Longer version: I want the "composer" field to be blank, unless it's a piece of classical music, so I delete that information on ALL my rock/rap/metal/etc songs. I also delete ALL "album artist" information, because I believe it is the most useless piece of information, and it screws up the sorting. For classical pieces, I enter the composer's name as "Artist" (Copland, Aaron). When I go through the whole library and do this, it's great. And then when I play a track, it often changes back. This is especially frustrating for composers whose names might be spelled in different ways -- Tchaikovsky, Chaikovsky, Tschaikowsky, etc.] How do I get iTunes to LEAVE THE SONG INFO ALONE once it has been manually edited?

If anyone has any advice about any or all of these issues, I'd love to hear back.

Thanks very much!

Windows 7

Posted on Dec 7, 2012 9:02 AM

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Answer 1

the fiend

Level 7

22,440 points

Feb 14, 2013 3:49 AM in response to legomaniac

1) Composer tab:

This is the Songs view (and by the way, this is iTunes 11!):

select Composer from the context menu.

Composer is now on the header bar. Alternatively, or as well as, the Composer field can be put in the Column Browser (the three columns above the songs list), see where it currently says Genre.

2a) Also, note that the Album Artist (which I ringed) now says Artist. To get that, simply click in the Album Artist header, anywhere but on the arrow itself. (The arrow simply reverses the sorting.)

2b) To see the artists, why not click on the Artists button at the top?

3) Are you trying to see this on the iPod? I believe that option has been removed. However, it is far wiser to use your iTunes library to make all and every change, and then simply Sync the iPod with your iTunes Library. No need to "look on the iPod from iTunes", since a Sync will make the iPod look the way you have told iTunes to make it look.

4) The check boxes for each song can be seen in the Songs view. See my first two screenshots.

5) Similar to my first two screenshots? If you look carefully at my first two screenshots, you will notice the Last Played column. It moves over in the shot with the newly added Composer column. Simply clicking on the header will reverse the sort order (and this one doesn't even have to be on the arrow!)

I believe I'm doing quite well up to now (tell me if you disagree.) But I'm dreading this next one...

6)

Typing Various Artists into the Album Artist field keeps those pesky compilation albums in the right place.
Not really sure why someone who claims to be OCD would want to incorretcly label a classical piece of music with the composer's name in the Artists field. How do you then know whether the piece is by a modern symphony orchestra or a period orchestra such as the Academy Of Ancient Music?
I can't think of any reason, way or purpose for iTunes to be changing the track titles. Are you sure it isn't another programme? I have changed several of the entries in my music, but I've never had any change back by themselves.

I await your response... 😀

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

272,697 points

Feb 14, 2013 4:50 AM in response to legomaniac

6) Song edits reverting

The ID3 tag specification allows for multiple tags to be attached to mp3 files, however in such cases iTunes sometimes update one tag and then read back unchanged data from another. Select some tracks you've had problems with, right-click and select Convert ID3 Tags, choose None and click OK. Repeat once or twice more to be certain, then right-click and select Convert ID3 Tags and choose V2.3. You will lose any embedded artwork, but you should now find that the changes stick.

As to why some would choose to use the composer as artist I quite understand. "The Messiah" is a work by Handel, regardless of the performers. "Something" is a song by The Beatles, though composed by George Harrison. Each work has a number of people involved in creating it but usually there is one group or individual that we consider primary. For classical music this is usually the composer. When I make such changes I will usually move the performer details into Comments. As to throwing away pertinent information that you're not interested in now. Why? Easy enough to ignore and it's there later if you should become interested.

See my article on Grouping tracks into albums for some backgound on iTunes organisation.

tt2

(I'm amazed by the two guests that have exactly the same question 😀)

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Answer 3

legomaniac Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 14, 2013 6:29 AM in response to the fiend

Fiend,

This looks really helpful -- thank you! I won't have a chance to try it out for myself until later (and of course, it means throwing in the towel on my other question and actually downloading iTunes again...but since there seems to be no alternative, I guess it's only a matter of time!). A couple quick thoughts/questions:

1) Songs --> Right-click --> Composer: Seems to be a nice option, I'll probably end up using that. I *was* able to get the Column browser back with some help on this forum (it's still greyed out, but there was a keyboard shortcut that worked...can't remember the details right now. So, having Composer up there will be nice. And there's the "last played" listing that I used to like so much! But these things are only available in "Songs" view? That's not too big of a problem, since I prefer looking at lists to little pictures anyway, but it would be nice to have a tab at the TOP of the player (like "Songs, Albums, Artists, Genres, Playlists, Radio, Match" so I could go there directly. (As an aside, are those items able to be changed? I've never used the Radio or Match features, and am not terribly interested in them...would much prefer to put Composers up there.)

2b) When I click(ed) the Artist tab at the top, it displays "Album Artist," and not "Artist." Though editing ID3 tags (as tt2 described), I got all the album artist fields back the way I like them (empty). So that issue is solved.

3) No, it was in iTunes. But, like I said, some other thread on this forum led me to a keyboard shortcut that made the Column Browser available again...even though it still appears in grey.

4) Is there a way to see those checkboxes within, say, Genre view? When I sync my iPod, I often (not always) have it sync specific genres, depending on what kind of music I want to listen to that day/week/long-car-trip/etc. So, scrolling through ALL songs is pretty tedious. I guess I can use the song list and sort it by genre. Just more clicking than I used to have to do.

6) tt2's explanation is exactly the solution I needed (found it on this forum sometime after posting the above query). When I upgraded to iTunes 11, a LOT of my song info was changed automatically. Weird strings of letters and numbers (or occasionally, simply the number 0) would appear in the comments section of some (not all) songs. Capitalization rules for titles/artist names were ignored ("Alice In Chains" -- "Man In A Box"), and, of course, most of my classical collection reverted back to the way that iTunes thinks I want it to display: with the performing group as Artist, and the composer's name (in whatever spelling it chooses, ala Chaikovsky, etc) in the composer section, FIRST name first. Before I had to replace my hard drive, I was going through the laborious task of correcting all of this...so I'm nervous to see what they look like when I bring them onto my new hard drive. Hopefully they don't all change yet again.

But, as to your question of why I don't want "Academy of Ancient Music" to appear as the Artist, the answer is simple: that's not how I look for a particular piece of music. I can't remember the last time I said, "Gee, I'd really like to listen to something recorded by Roger Norrington" -- it's always, "I'd like to listen to Beethoven's 8th." So, I go to Beethoven. And then, since I have several recordings of the 8th symphony, I search through those to find the period instrument recording (although, if I'm going for period instruments, it's always John Eliot Gardiner...but that's another topic! :-) ). I keep all the performer info in "Comments," which is great unless iTunes deletes it.

As an aside, there's no way to assign multiple genres to a single track, is there? For example, to have Harry Connick's recordings from the "When Harry Met Sally" soundtrack appear in BOTH the "soundtrack" and "jazz" genres?

Thanks for your help...I'll try out these song list solutions. Looks very useful!

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Answer 4

the fiend

Level 7

22,440 points

Feb 14, 2013 10:56 AM in response to turingtest2

turingtest2 wrote:

(I'm amazed by the two guests that have exactly the same question 😀)

Yes, I had noticed that. Very curious!

turingtest2 wrote:

As to throwing away pertinent information that you're not interested in now. Why? Easy enough to ignore and it's there later if you should become interested.

Agreed.

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Answer 5

the fiend

Level 7

22,440 points

Feb 14, 2013 11:25 AM in response to legomaniac

2b) You must not click on the arrow. That particular header toggles between three options when you click the header;

Album,
Album by Artist and
Album by Artist/Year.

and subsequently clicking on the arrow reverses that sort.

3) The shortcut to make the Column Browser appear is CTRL+SHIFT+B. If you then right-click the Column Browser header, you will find the Composer option.

4) Once you have the Column Browser turned on, and with both Composer and Genre showing, it's a simple job to select a genre you wish to concentrate on. This is of course, in iTunes. If on a road trip, and without iTunes and only your iPod, then you can navigate to genres, composers etc on many iPod models (for music, I use mainly a Classic, but also an iPod Touch), and create an On-The-Go Playlist (on the Classic) or Add A Playlist on the Touch. Thus, you can create new Playlists on your iPod at any time. There must be similar options on other iPod models.

6) It is of course your choice if you choose to remove the artist and replace it with the Composer. You can - of course - on both the iPod Classic and the iPod Touch for example, find a Composers menu. As I mentioned in my brief reply to tt2 (and yes, I did take his comments a tiny bit out of context!), I too would simply ignore menu options I wasn't intertested in (such as Artist) and use the field I was interested in (Composers). Not only does that then mean the artist information is there should I want it, but it saves uneccessary work editing out the Artists field. Hopefully, tt2's information has addressed the undo-the-editing problem. It's not something I have ever experienced.

Your aside:

legomaniac wrote:

As an aside, there's no way to assign multiple genres to a single track, is there? For example, to have Harry Connick's recordings from the "When Harry Met Sally" soundtrack appear in BOTH the "soundtrack" and "jazz" genres?

No, but...

How about adding the second genre to the Grouping field (song - File/Get Info/Info>Grouping), and then creating a Smart Playlist that looks for, and adds to itself, anything with the Grouping of both Jazz and Soundtrack, or Genre of Soundtrack and Grouping of Jazz, or whichever combination works for you? Okay, you then have to find that list in the Playlists section. But at least the list you want is available to you, in both iTunes and on your iPod.

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Answer 6

Mar 24, 2013 1:43 AM in response to the fiend

oh...

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