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Level 1

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Sorting Issues

I have two issues that may be related. They both concern trying to listen to multiple-"song" works in the right order.

First, when I sort my songs by name, iTunes has its own idea of what the order should be, occasionally completely scrambling numerical order. The picture below shows an example. We should have each "Daphnis et Chloe" item in order of number (as the "Le Tombeau de Couperin" items below it are), but the order is 1, 3, 5, 21, 24, 15, 18, 8… Also, this applies only to certain works; the vast majority of the time, iTunes gets it right, but if it get a particular work wrong, it always gets it wrong.

Similarly, iTunes seems to have a default order of songs for certain works that is not the original album order. This is a problem for smart playlists, which order certain things in really odd combinations; some works are split up among other works that weren't even in the same album. The picture below, snapped from a smart playlist, shows that the standard order for these unrelated works is to take a single movement ("song") from each of five works at a time: Whereas the "Micro-Symphony" should all be grouped together, the Beethoven concerto should be in one place, the Mozart serenade should be in one place, and each of the Bach works should be together, as they were in their original albums (and this selection represents at least four completely different albums), they are split up so that not even two adjacent movements are together in this particular case. In other (but much less common) cases, a group of songs from one album will be together, but in the wrong order (so that I end up listening to the first movement last). Is there a way to change this default order?

Thanks,

-Timothy Moser

Posted on Dec 25, 2012 11:16 AM

20 replies

turingtest2

Level 10

272,949 points

Dec 27, 2012 11:02 AM in response to TimothyDM

When you view a playlist sorted on the first column of numbers this represents the current Play Order for that playlist. You can select and manually move tracks (or blocks of tracks) up and down the list. For regular playlists the initial order will be the order things were added to the list. For smart playlists the order is undefined. When you have the list sorted on any other column you can choose to right-click on the playlist title and select Copy to Play Order from the context menu to set a new inital order that you could then refine further if you wish.

I haven't tested the behaviour with the latest build but in principle if you assign each "Work" a unique value for Grouping you should be able to use the Shuffle by Grouping feature. While this would require some investment of time to achieve you would also be able to quickly chose from your catalogued "Works" using the Grouping column in the column browser. You will usually want the playlist itself sorted in Album or Album by Artist order to ensure the tracks of the work are played in the correct sequence.

See my article on Grouping tracks into albums for general advice on organizing in iTunes.

tt2

TimothyDM Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 27, 2012 11:02 AM in response to turingtest2

Somehow I didn't know about "Copy to Play Order". That is very helpful for making sure works are in the right order.

kilima

Level 3

589 points

Dec 27, 2012 3:52 PM in response to TimothyDM

Thanks for your reply with example. Makes it clear why you are having troubles.

iTunes is designed for the Pop Album culture where the hierarchy is Artist/Album/Song.

For managing a Classical music collection, this doesn't work because most people don't properly map the hierachy of classical music into this format.

Here's an article by someone who has and who shows What and Why and How.

http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunes.htm

See particularly the section : "How Do I Tag Everything"

kilima

Level 3

589 points

Dec 28, 2012 1:24 PM in response to kilima

Tim,

Here is an example I cobbled together from 7 CD's of Schubert by Alfred Brendel. Made Schubert the Artist and Brendel the Composer and split up the CD's into 14 Albums. Then grabbed the whole lot and made a playlist which I "Shuffle by Album" to play. Works like a charm. 🙂

1. SONGS view with Column Browser.

2. Playlist in Artist View.

TimothyDM Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 28, 2012 2:03 PM in response to kilima

Thanks so much for the article and the examples! I intend to do exactly this, except that for my purposes I would probably rather not switch the Artist and Composer fields. Thanks again for putting up with my troubles.

Sorting Issues