How do you name commonly named tracks (e.g. Main Title)

[Tallguy 3,379]

I wish I kept the rest of my life as neat as I do my music tags.

 

But I recently had to reconstruct some of my playlists with the help of an app and I was running into trouble with thing like "Main Title" and "End Credits".

 

I thought about renaming them things like "Main Title (Silverado)" or even "Main Title from Silverado". Has anyone done anything similar?

 

It's a silly thing to worry about but sometimes it's nice to worry about the silly things to take a break from the important things.

[Thor 7,474]

Don't think I've ever encountered this "problem". I can add as many "Main Titles" tracks to a playlist as I want, without running into any difficulties. But then I don't listen to music on my phone, and never will. Perhaps this is where the problem appears.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

1 hour ago, Tallguy said:

I thought about renaming them things like "Main Title (Silverado)"

 

This is exactly what I do. I do the same for the end credits.

[Datameister 2,037]

I've never run into any trouble having identically-named tracks from different albums. The only thing that gets tricky is when a single album has multiple tracks with the same name. I usually let that go too, but it's not ideal.

[Bespin 8,480]

Name it Track 1.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

I name them however they are named on the back of the case.

[Edmilson 7,393]

I think a better question would be: when there's typos on track names, do you keep them or do you correct them? For example, JNH's Mockingjay Part 1 has a cue named "Taunting the car" when the correct name should've been "Taunting the cat".

[Datameister 2,037]

9 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

I think a better question would be: when there's typos on track names, do you keep them or do you correct them. For example, JNH's Mockingjay Part 1 has a cue named "Taunting the car" when the correct name should've been "Taunting the cat".

 

Better question, yeah. I fix them. I fix capitalization, too - a much more frequent issue with record labels of all sizes. I don't know why overcapitalization is so rampant.

[mstrox 6,647]

I leave whatever GraceNote populates for the CD.  The only thing I play around with is the genre, which I want to be exact because it populates my smart playlists.

[Tallguy 3,379]

To clarify, all of my music players can handle duplicate tag titles. After all they are all in different folders and the rest of the tags are different. It's just a question of being able to read them at a glance or (in the rare case I described above) if ALL I have to go in is the title.

 

@Nick1Ø66 nice to know I'm not the only crazy person here.

 

I am also getting into the habit on CDs like Eiger Sanction or Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan of appending (LP) or (Album) at the end of tracks that are part of an original presentation. I used to break them into their own Album tags but it took up too much real estate on my music players.

[GerateWohl 4,341]

I have seen music libraries naming the tracks in this schema:

<composer name>:<movie name> - <track title>

 

e.g.:

"John Williams:The Empire Strikes Back - Yoda and the Force"

[Mr. Who 919]

9 hours ago, Edmilson said:

I think a better question would be: when there's typos on track names, do you keep them or do you correct them? For example, JNH's Mockingjay Part 1 has a cue named "Taunting the car" when the correct name should've been "Taunting the cat".

I think I changed "Taunting the Car". Another similar case would be Dueling the Dragon from the HP2 CS.

[Richard Penna 3,673]

I recognise the issue, but I don't play music on my phone (i.e. in the car, where I'd notice it) enough to do anything about it. My primary effort is tagging for my PC, and the covert art app I use displays title and album.

 

I correct genuine typos or mistakes, but where the producer has named a track something that doesn't quite make sense.... meh, I just leave it.

[Thor 7,474]

I'm probably dense, but I still don't understand the issue. If I drag a "Main Titles" cue into a playlist in iTunes, it will not override another "Main Titles" cue. The different film titles are clearly marked in a separate column.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

4 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

I have seen music libraries naming the tracks in this schema:

<composer name>:<movie name> - <track title>

 

e.g.:

"John Williams:The Empire Strikes Back - Yoda and the Force"

 

Yeah, this kind of defeats the purpose of being user-friendly, since on most screens you'd see something like "John Williams:The Emp" before it started to scroll off.

 

Though I suppose you could take it to another level, "John Williams:StarWars_Episode IV_A New Hope - Main Title [Alternate] [Take 19] [London Symphony Orchestra]"

 

Actually, I've seen some classical collections tagged that way.

 

[Tallguy 3,379]

7 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Actually, I've seen some classical collections tagged that way.

 

Classical collectors are tagging MANIACS. There are entire threads on the MusicBee forum (a music player) pertaining to making custom tags and sorts for classical.

 

8 hours ago, Thor said:

I'm probably dense, but I still don't understand the issue. If I drag a "Main Titles" cue into a playlist in iTunes, it will not override another "Main Titles" cue. The different film titles are clearly marked in a separate column.

 

It's a fairly specific issue, @Thor so I can see how it would be unclear. I was importing my library from one software to another. All of my tags and folder structures are fine, but I had to manually import my playlists and all I had was the track title. Most of the time it's nothing to worry about. And by "most of the time" I mean "almost all of the time".

 

But I also like looking at a track in a list and knowing what it is.

 

(I have a whole naming structure for the tracks on LLL's Star Trek TOS Box.)

 

This is such a trivial problem that First World Problems are looking at it and saying "Cushy!"

[Marian Schedenig 8,175]

21 hours ago, Edmilson said:

I think a better question would be: when there's typos on track names, do you keep them or do you correct them? For example, JNH's Mockingjay Part 1 has a cue named "Taunting the car" when the correct name should've been "Taunting the cat".

 

Good question. I'm not sure if I'd fix that or keep the typo. But I'd definitely fix the capitalisation.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

2 hours ago, Tallguy said:

 

Classical collectors are tagging MANIACS. There are entire threads on the MusicBee forum (a music player) pertaining to making custom tags and sorts for classical.

It’s true. That’s why real aficionado’s use dedicated classical music streamers like Idagio or Primephonic (whom Apple just acquired). It’s not about the selection, all streamers have basically the same catalogue, it’s about the tagging.

[Mephariel 451]

I always put the movie name in front, then with a dash and then the track name.

 

 

[Bespin 8,480]

Usually, when I encode a CD, I get the tags with the "by defautl" tool of EAC. When the CD is not found, I after the encoding, I use TagScanner to automatically tag my files using Discogs.

 

Discogs is good for you.

[Datameister 2,037]

2 hours ago, Mephariel said:

I always put the movie name in front, then with a dash and then the track name.

 

 

 

Curious why you don't just let the movie name sit in the album name field? I assume you must be listening with something that doesn't show album name?

[Tom Guernsey 2,280]

My track naming pedantry only extends to being accurate and consistent so I'll generally leave the main title to be named as such than adding the name of the film to it or anything else. A lot of older scores use naming conventions like "Main Title from the Motion Picture" but I tend to just delete the rest that isn't "Main Title" since it's pretty well redundant. Same for end credits.

 

I also have a few of my own conventions, notably the "film presentation" (or however you want to describe it) of an expanded edition is just the title and a separate album presentation has "Original Album" (or "Album Versions" if it's a handful of album edits) in brackets and alternates etc. are the title plus "Bonus Tracks" in brackets.

 

And yes... classical music tagging is a minefield and the default tagging is very often "Composer - Work - Opus Number - Movement" in the track name and I neaten it back to the track name being just the movement number and name of the movement or, if there's several works on the album, the name of the particular work, i.e. "Violin Concerto: I. Allegro". iTunes has a reasonably decent feature that lets you tag things with the work and the movement which displays things fairly effectively for classical music. It's a bit halfhearted in how it works but it's decent enough, I just need the time to go through the 16,492,389,446 (approx) classical albums I have in my library to turn this feature on. Fortunately if you use the convention I mentioned above of using roman numerals for the numbers with a full stop after it, it seems to automatically recognise which big of the tag is the work, the number of the movement and the name of the movement.

[Jay 37,305]

Sometimes I'll clean up tags to have LESS words in them (IE, "Main Title" instead of "Main Title From The Motion Picture The Eiger Sanction")

But it'd never occur to me to put MORE words into a tag, like "Main Title (Silverado)" instead of just "Main Title".  There's no circumstance where I'd ever lose track of what's what, even in playlist situations described above.  I could just look at playlist in notepad to see exactly which files it's playing if I needed to know that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I'd definitely correct any typos if the automatic tagging introduced any, sure.  Can't recall that ever happening off the top of my head, but it probably has I guess.

[Richard Penna 3,673]

I don't understand where the convention Main Title From The Motion Picture <name> comes from at all. It's very redundant information.

 

I'd love to say I have consistency with tagging/categorising alternates/film versions etc, but I just do what satisfies my inner geek on a per album basis. The most extreme example of my keeping the original tags is Sleepy Hollow. I decided to retain the 'alternate/revised/version#3' (etc, etc) suffixes on all the main program tags, but in that case it was more a recognition that the score is more of a collection of music at various stages of revision.

[Tallguy 3,379]

Heh. I just had a very practical application of this "problem". I was looking at last.fm and I noticed one of my most played tracks was Main Title by James Horner... From Braveheart.

 

I don't own Braveheart. I don't like Braveheart. I don't listen to Braveheart on Spotify or Amazon Music. Not once in a while. Certainly not as one of my most played tracks!

 

So I drilled down and I was able to see that last.fm has lumped in The Wrath of Khan, The Rocketeer, Sneakers, Brainstorm, Aliens, Apollo 13, Battle Beyond the Stars, Searching for Bobby Fisher...

 

As I'm sure I've indicated previously, if this is the worst problem I have today I'm doing alright.

[bollemanneke 3,338]

I don't touch track titles anymore, whether I like them or not. Same with artist info and album/disc info. All I change are the track numbers if I remove tracks from an album or merge albums in one folder. So my library is one huge mess and I love it. I have a very good folder structure that allows me to find everythign easily whether the tags make sense or not.

[Positivatee 327]

On 22/09/2021 at 2:19 PM, Richard Penna said:

I don't understand where the convention Main Title From The Motion Picture <name> comes from at all. It's very redundant information.

 

It makes some sense if the album is a compilation or live concert recording. In that case, the official track may contain the suffix "from <Movie Name>." For example, look at the track titles for the album below. Each track title may have had6its own movie-specific title as part of that original album... But here, it functions as part of a compilation. The titles of Tracks 2-8 are kinda intuitive. Tracks 1 and 9 have generic titles, so the movie name helps. Granted, these are not Main Titles. In this case, I kept the track titles generally the way presented by Discogs for r10922850, simply lowercasing the preposition "from" to suit my OCD style. 

 

 

I now see that Track 8 has a typo. So much for my hand picked curation. 

 

It's the same for the John Williams Vienna concert, but I won't share that screenshot...because I notice that I included parentheses. 

 

But suppose someone tacks the movie name into the Title tag of each track in an album... 

Prologue (from Hook) 

We Don't Wanna Grow Up (from Hook) 

 

That's just silly. 

 

At the end of the day... Tag fields exist to help us better organize, categorize, and find our music when we want to find something quickly. A system that is efficient for one user could be alien to another. 

[Mephariel 451]

Since I put everything in one playlist on my ipod, I always start with the movie name to avoid that issue and also so I can sort properly.

[pete 906]

I generally shorten things. If a track is "movie name" main title, I'll just call the track "movie name"
I also add the movie name to generic titles like prologue, epilogue, elegy, and finale etc. So "Hook Prologue" for example. And for end titles/end credits, I just use "movie name" Credits.  Generally, I aim for consistency. If my track titles are not consistent, there'll be a huge disaster somewhere, maybe even the end of the world/universe. 

[LSH 968]

I used to be massively anal about my organisation of music but I gave up on it recently. I realised that I was caring too much about impressing myself. I can find what I'm looking for when I need it... and that's enough. 

[Oomoog the Ecstatic 314]

I just keep a list in my desk drawer of all the tracks ever named Main Titles, and I renamed them Main Titles 1, Main Titles 2... etc. in historical order of who did it first. That list is also the only thing I have in my desk drawer.