Sorting Music by Composer

[Ian Malone]

2009/8/12 R. G. Newbury <newbury at mandamus.org>:
>>> >> Around 07:51pm on Monday, August 10, 2009 (UK time), R. G. Newbury
>>> >> scrawled:
>>> >>
>>>> >>> Does anyone know of a program with the flexibility to set things up
>>>> >>> this
>>>> >>> way?
>>> >>
>>> >> Banshee can sort by composer, or any other tag. Â You will need to
>>> >> right
>>> >> click on the headings, and add composer as a column. Â Its yum
>>> >> installable, too.
>>> >>
>>> >> Steve
>> >
>> > Right you are...Unfortunately, it won't handle flac files.... I should
>> > have
>> > mentioned that.
>> >
>
>> I haven't used it in a while, but possibly Quod Libet (should be
>> available from add/remove software).
>
> Well I couldn't even get it to recognize any of my music files, much less
> play them.
>

I'm a bit surprised if that's really the case, I can use it to play
FLAC no problem. If no files show up in the library after importing
you could try hitting the search button to refresh the list.

Slightly counter-intuitively you'll need to go to Music|Browse and
select one of the options there to get a second window if you want to
drag files from the library to a playlist. Enter 'composer' in the
'other' field in the music|preferences|song list tab.

> And I find that RhythmBox has an incredibly obtuse interface. I was
> eventually able to create a Playlist consisting of only one album after
> realizing that the damn thing wants to dump all my music into one list. And
> I still have no idea which magic series of clicks and keypresses got it to
> actually play the music.
>

Double click on a track name to play. It will play through all files
in the current collection (highlighted bold in the left side pane),
whether it's a playlist or the main library. If there's something in
the 'Play Queue' that will get switched to once the current track
completes. Double clicking on a collection or track will switch to
that collection (and toggle play/pause).

> I am NOT impressed at the opacity of the interface. Nor am I impressed with
> the requirements of importing and creating a playlist for each album.
> Tedious boring work which computers never get tired of doing..
>

There's no need for a an album playlist. Select Library|Music view,
select the album in the album pane and 'all X artists' in the artists
pane (or select the artist too if you want to filter within the
album). Sort by track (for multi-disc albums this should take the
DISCNUMBER tag into account), Double click on the first track.

> Anyone got any better ideas for a program which will deal with a tree of
>  composers, with albums as leaves underneath?
>

Hasn't been written so far as I know.  The "artist - name" model is so
pervasive in music tagging that everyone who listens to classical
music eventually gives up and puts the 'composer' in the artist tag
and performers (if they care) in the album name.

-- 
imalone