# iTunes 9.0 WOW!



## kg4fxg (May 24, 2009)

Do you use iTunes? Do you like the look of the new version 9.0. Nice!

Do you use an iPod? I was even thinking of getting that little one that will anounce what you are listening to composer & piece.


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## Mirror Image (Apr 20, 2009)

kg4fxg said:


> Do you use iTunes? Do you like the look of the new version 9.0. Nice!
> 
> Do you use an iPod? I was even thinking of getting that little one that will anounce what you are listening to composer & piece.


I haven't updated to the new version yet yet, because quite frankly unless there's a major improvement done in the way of editing information, especially single track listings, then I don't see why I should update.

What's so great about the new version? What does it do that's so different from the last version? I'm sure it's no different than the last version.


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## Jaime77 (Jun 29, 2009)

I got it and for one thing the store is better organized and the appearance has changed. Something it badly needed. At least they are willing to improve and change unlike facebook, sky plus and other interfaces that seem stuck in a mould. So far that is all I have seen. I am just glad they do change things.

*Mirror Image*, editing single track info, it's not so badly done or I don't know what you are referring to. Is it when you click on 'get info'? You can change groups of tracks simultaneously too this way. I find it helpful enough.


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## Mirror Image (Apr 20, 2009)

jaibyrne said:


> *Mirror Image*, editing single track info, it's not so badly done or I don't know what you are referring to. Is it when you click on 'get info'? You can change groups of tracks simultaneously too this way. I find it helpful enough.


Yes, I know you can go into Get Info and change the individual tracks, but what I'm talking about is being able to highlight say tracks 1-5 instead of selecting all of them, does that make sense what I'm saying?

To clarify: say tracks 1-4 are Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, and GraceNote (I hate this company) brings those tracks up wrong, but the rest of the recording is right. How do you highlight tracks 1-4 only? That's what I'm trying to figure out.


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## Jaime77 (Jun 29, 2009)

Mirror Image said:


> Yes, I know you can go into Get Info and change the individual tracks, but what I'm talking about is being able to highlight say tracks 1-5 instead of selecting all of them, does that make sense what I'm saying?
> 
> To clarify: say tracks 1-4 are Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, and GraceNote (I hate this company) brings those tracks up wrong, but the rest of the recording is right. How do you highlight tracks 1-4 only? That's what I'm trying to figure out.


If you select the tracks and hold down Ctrl at the same time you can select as many tracks as you like, then when you click 'get info' the alterations you make effect all the tracks you selected. I am not sure if this is what you mean. Gracenote does make a mess frequently. I have spent hours editing tracks individually and in various groups. I would normally edit, as you say, tracks 1-4 of a CD of perhaps 9 tracks, in oder to label the composer for that work (on a mixed composer CD), this means I can list my itunes catalogue by composer which is very useful. I stick in their dates too so I get to learn them!


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## Mirror Image (Apr 20, 2009)

jaibyrne said:


> If you select the tracks and hold down Ctrl at the same time you can select as many tracks as you like, then when you click 'get info' the alterations you make effect all the tracks you selected. I am not sure if this is what you mean. Gracenote does make a mess frequently. I have spent hours editing tracks individually and in various groups. I would normally edit, as you say, tracks 1-4 of a CD of perhaps 9 tracks, in oder to label the composer for that work (on a mixed composer CD), this means I can list my itunes catalogue by composer which is very useful. I stick in their dates too so I get to learn them!


Wow...I didn't for the life of me know how to do this! Thanks so much!


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Does iTunes handle classical music well? ie. handle tags like Orchestra, Conductor, Composer, Soloist, Classical Genre (eg. Opera) seperate from Classical Period (eg. Baroque), etc?


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## Bach (Jun 2, 2008)

Do you like the new look, kg4fxg? It looks like the old one wearing mascara. You know when your teenage daughter wears makeup for the first time - slightly shocking and a bit messy.. that's what it looks like.


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## Jaime77 (Jun 29, 2009)

Bach said:


> Do you like the new look, kg4fxg? It looks like the old one wearing mascara. You know when your teenage daughter wears makeup for the first time - slightly shocking and a bit messy.. that's what it looks like.


 I love the analogy.

itunes can handle any tag you like either by using smart playlist which update live or by using the various options for genre, year, composer etc of the columns. The smart playlist means you can save tracks with comments like 'chamber music' and each time you get chamber music just add that comment to the whole CD - you highlight and get info for all of it, it will update the smart playlist then.

I think itunes does well to sort things as you like them


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Some iTunes discussions on tagging for classical music:

http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunes.htm
http://www.tunequest.org/on-classical-music-tagging-for-itunes-and-ipod/20060530/

Seems it's hardly ideal.


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## kg4fxg (May 24, 2009)

*iTunes Classification*

It is always hard to classifiy items in iTunes for classical music.

I do the following:

If name reads Alcina, Act 2 Ah, Mio Cor
Composer reads, Handel, George Frideric (1685-1759); Deu/Eng; Bar

I put much in the way of Composer, Birth, Death, Country, and end with Genre. While I use the different Genres in iTunes adding this to the Composer makes it easy to see.

I use an add-in to iTunes that will take any information stored and cut and past it (many tracks or albums at a time) to Lyrics.

You say why Lyrics?

If you tap the albumn artwork on the iPod Touch it will display Lyrics. The Lyrics that display is all the information about the piece playing without have to look at it scrolling.

I choose to display just the piece and composer. But you can choose from the following to past into Lyrics which is an unused field.

Name
Artist
Album
Grouping
Composer
BPM
Comments
Description
Year
kbps

Now with this program I can mass copy any field on say 1000 tracks all the Composer info to Comments.

Or, say you would like to rename the Artist Field. You could move everything from Artist to Comments. That way you are not deleting info, and opening up another category Artist for some other data.

I love the display in the Lyrics mode.

Once you set up Composer like I do iTunes remembers so all you have to type is Vivaldi and the rest comes up automatically. With mass changes is it so easy to turn a purchse into my form for composer.

Purchases would read:

Vivaldi, Antonio

My mass change would change this to read:

Vivaldi, Antonio (1678-1741); ITA; BAR

And all I would need to type is Vivaldi, and the rest is added for me. I would also change the genre to Baroque.

One quick tap of the screen, or you can see this also on the iPod classic, you see the whole piece and know the composer who is from Italy and the period is Baroque. One easy way to learn all this stuff.

Besides the selected tags to lyrics I use "JewelCase" add in to iTunes. This lets me see the CD cover spin slowly as a screen saver with the artwork on the front and display similar information of what is playing. Real Cool!

The Lyric add in really does much more. It allows you to mass change your library. For example it will change all Composer names from First, Last to Last comma First.

Here is the choices:

Batch Set Tracks Sorting Tags
Composer to Last Rest-of-Name
Fetch Art 
First Item - To Tag
Put This After That
Put This Before That
Put This In That
Search Artist To Make Sort Artist
Search Replace Tag Text
Selected Tags To Lyrics
Swap This With That

As you can see it makes it easy to mass update your iTunes library so it is all uniform.

I think I found this app here:

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/


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## kg4fxg (May 24, 2009)

*Snow Leopard*

I might also mention that I am running the new Snow Leopard and iTunes 9.0 and have not had any problems.


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

I prefer muso to organise my music - it's built with classical music in mind.


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## Mirror Image (Apr 20, 2009)

Bach said:


> Do you like the new look, kg4fxg? It looks like the old one wearing mascara. You know when your teenage daughter wears makeup for the first time - slightly shocking and a bit messy.. that's what it looks like.


I updated mine last night and it looks just like the old one. Maybe a little bit slicker looking but really nothing special about it. So kg4fxg is getting excited over nothing if you ask me.

They can change the face of the program all they want to. The bottomline is does it work better? The answer is no, it doesn't. Nothing new about it.

Let me also say that the basic function of iTunes is to get a CD onto my iPod with little headache. I could careless about all that other junk that is totally useless to me like the "Genius" function. Totally stupid and irrelevant.


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## Mirror Image (Apr 20, 2009)

My main problem with iTunes is GraceNote. What are some better CD database websites to my information? The next question is how can I tell iTunes to go to this other CD database website instead of GraceNote, that is, if any of this is possible?


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Installation of iTunes is a pain - so many progress bars they cease to have any meaning - how many times do I have to reach 100%? How many times "Validating Install"?


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## Mirror Image (Apr 20, 2009)

bassClef said:


> Installation of iTunes is a pain - so many progress bars they cease to have any meaning - how many times do I have to reach 100%? How many times "Validating Install"?


My question is how many versions are they going to keep coming out with? The newest version isn't even an improvement over the last one. There's nothing remotely "WOW" about it, unnecessary is more like it.


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## th_grant (Dec 2, 2010)

*Itunes can only hack it*

As long you do not have separate field for composition and for album it will be a mess
Itunes included 
I put all my cd on itunes but is a kludge


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