# openClassical - a new version!



## DavidH (May 12, 2013)

Hi there,

We recently published a new version of our project, www.openclassical.com, and we'd like to hear your feedback & comments!

The new version is a major re-design of the interface, with a several new features added as well. It was a lot of work, but we believe the site is now much easier to navigate and understand. We are really proud of our new front-page, where we rank works of the same genre against each other - across all composers.

Our team is also growing, which is another level of excitement for us, which means that music is being indexed faster than ever. Our goal is to map out all of classical music, within a framework that allows easy discovery of new things, and browsing of music you like. This is very big ambition, but we believe it's worth doing.

Please let us know what you like, don't like, and think would improve the site. All feedback will be much appreciated.

Thanks!

-David


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2014)

I think the site is really cool and I will be visiting from time to time. 

Many people around here are skeptical of "best of" and "top 10" lists - understandably so. You might want to somehow tone down the numbering and implied ranking aspect of the site. Maybe make the works shown a bit more stochastic and suggest more of a browsing element. 

My guess is that you're trying to make a tool that people can use to explore classical music rather than trying to be an arbiter of taste. It's hard to do this though without some implicit or explicit ranking. I'm wondering though if you can borrow any organizational ideas from classical.net's "Basic Repertoire" tab.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I've bookmarked it--looks like a terrific site. I especially like the "timeline" feature, and the ability to add or subtract "minor" composers to it. I look forward to browsing.

*p.s.* it seems like I can't move forward or backwards within and beyond the Classical Period--is this because the site is still under construction?


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## Guest (Apr 8, 2014)

Ya lost me at "greatest hits."

But I clicked around anyway.

The lists for each era are woefully small. And one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the Romantics is listed as a Classical composer. And several modern composers are listed as Romantics. (There's certainly no sense of history in this site--no sense that no composer before 1810 wrote classical music. All of the music written before 1810 was retrofitted to the then new term. And the Romantic era was widely considered to be over by 1848. At least in the 19th century, it was so considered.)

The whole major/minor thing I find very troubling, too. And even if you grant any validity to "major" and "minor," how does Alkan, for instance, get to be major, but Spohr is minor?


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

Is there any transparency on the algorithm for what constitutes something being a "greatest hit?" 

I ask out of curiosity, not grumpiness. Even if I disagree with the rankings, that's not the point - it seems like a really nicely visually designed tool for exploring composers and periods. And who can disagree with that? I agree with BPS's comments about maybe toning down the 'ranking' aspect.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I think it's a good way to introduce people to classical music. You had me at Ockegehem. (Though I'm looking forward to seeing Obrecht in the Renaissance composers.)


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I am having fun playing around with the different lists. Currently listening to the Cherubini symphony on the site.

EDIT: I greatly appreciate the huge amount of effort that went into that site. Thanks!


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## DavidH (May 12, 2013)

Thanks everyone for the comments! I will try to address all. I really appreciate you all taking the time to share your thoughts.

@BPS - You are the first to ask about our ranking system. We order works by visitor viewcount, which is expressed on the front page on the right, as 'x views.' For a composer's Top 10 page, it is the same. Since several people are mentioning it, this information should probably be made more obvious. Do you think, under the big number (eg. '1'), we should display the current view count there? This would more visually tie the viewcount to the ranking to the visitor. Now I see that a first-time visitor is expected to correlate the left-hand ranking with the right-hand viewcount - probably not obvious at first glance. I'm open to any other suggestions how we can improve this.

This also points to the data-driven nature of what we're trying to do - which I think is quite in line with your suggestion.

Thanks for the suggestion to look at classic.net!

@Blancrocher - thanks for the comments! For the Timeline page, you should be able to click in the timeline (and hold the mouse button down), and then drag with your mouse. We will be adding some extra navigation buttons in the near future, to allow auto-scroll with a button click. However, I'd really like to know how it is not working for you. If it's possible, could you give your operating system & browser details?

@some guy - thanks for taking the time to write.

We have several goals with this project, and a big one is making classical music easier for non-musicians to get into. While we continue to iterate our design of the site, we do think that "Greatest Hits of All Time" captures a sense of something much bigger than, for example, "Greatest Hits of the 90's." Especially for our front-page, which will be seen by the relative non-musician. We also hope it would stimulate some curiosity, because it's a big claim.

Our challenge is to balance this type of informality with the rigor we do behind the scenes as we data-model each composer and work, so that something like our complete works of Beethoven page can work.

With respect to historical period, yes calling one composer 'Classical' versus 'Romantic' is a label, and is not obvious for all composers. Our larger goal at the moment is adding works for all composers, which will allow more exciting things in the future. For the time being, the broad groupings allow a relative newcomer to get a sense that 'Classical' music is actually described differently at different times. I understand you might find the presentation of the current dataset frustrating. However, also bear in mind that the project is largely data-driven (meaning that a dynamically changing dataset is interpreted and presented by code), so for example Schubert is the only composer right now with a specific override to be in the 'Romantic' time period - even though his dates places him as a contemporary of Beethoven. The upside of this approach is that new composers can be easily added, and they will appear in the correct place in the timeline, and throughout the site (although as you say, perhaps under the wrong 'label').

Major / minor composers. Yes, this is important. The reason it exists is that most of the current 'minor' composers don't have any works listed on openClassical, so if you click on their name, there is no music to see. If we presented all the composers by default, a new visitor would most likely see one of these pages, then assume there is no music on openClassical. As we continue adding new music to the site, composers get moved to the 'Major' list. Eventually, this distinction will simply go away. You are absolutely right about Spohr.

I hope that you can keep in mind that openClassical is still a relatively new project, and we do share your aspirations of what the site should become. It's those goals that we find most exciting! However we have to build it one step at a time, and look for feedback along the way to help us get to that destination sooner than later.

If you have any further comments, we'd appreciate that.

@peterb - thanks! Does my answer to BPS clarify how we do our rankings? Do you have any other suggestion how we could make this more obvious to the visitor?

@Manxfeeder - Ockegehem is pretty cool, and actually one of the things I find really cool about the project is that you end up remembering what these guys look like! I'll make sure Obrecht is added sooner than later. Thanks for the feedback.

@Florestan - thanks for the comments!

Thanks all! Looking forward to any further comments & suggestions.

-David


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