# I would like a little help with my classical library



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I very rarely listen to just the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 5th. If I listen to a symphony, it is always the whole thing, or not at all. I just can't separate them. I also don't have any clue what I want to listen to most of the time, and want to use a shuffle feature of some sort, but my library is far to vast to do anything manually. iTunes itself makes it pretty easy to do the shuffling I want, but, if I want to take the music with me, say on my phone or tablet, the options aren't there. I have thought of joining tracks... But as I have said the library is far far too vast to do that with. So are there any options for me out there? Also if this belongs anyplace else please feel free to move it.


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## haydnfan (Apr 13, 2011)

I don't understand what the problem is. Do an album search by composer and work. That is what I do on my pc, and what I used to do on my iphone.

What phone, what tablet and what apps do you use for listening to music? I think the answer will lie in you using a different app that has more robust search engine.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I *think* the question is, can you shuffle on the album or symphony level on an iPhone or iPad without joining tracks.


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## gHeadphone (Mar 30, 2015)

I think you would either need to find a device that can shuffle by album (lets say an IPhone, Fiio device etc) or you could use a program like Foobar to join the movements of a symphony together to create one file (this is quite a bit more work tbh)


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## Guest (Sep 8, 2015)

Manok said:


> I very rarely listen to just the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 5th. If I listen to a symphony, it is always the whole thing, or not at all. I just can't separate them. *I also don't have any clue what I want to listen to most of the time*, and want to use a shuffle feature of some sort, but my library is far to vast to do anything manually. iTunes itself makes it pretty easy to do the shuffling I want, but, if I want to take the music with me, say on my phone or tablet, the options aren't there. I have thought of joining tracks... But as I have said the library is far far too vast to do that with. So are there any options for me out there? Also if this belongs anyplace else please feel free to move it.


I think I've identified the problem, and working on the library isn't going to solve it.

Also, don't take the music with you. If you are "out" in the world, there are people there to interact with. Plus there's a vast conglomerate of delightful noises out there--those people, for one, and tons of different machines for two, and there's birds and the wind and street musicians and dogs and.... You might even get some thunder from time to time, if you're lucky. (There's often quite an entertaining light show that goes with the latter, you may have noticed.)


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I've been struggling with the same issue and have decided it's not worth it. While I'm at work I listen to single movements because I'm not that focused to worry about entire works anyway. 

When I'm home I have deeper listening sessions and I use an Excel spreadsheet / catalog, one column of which is a random number generator. I usually sort by number of plays, genre, then the random number to get something I'm in the mood for and haven't heard in a while. Then I can manually play them in the order suggested.


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## bharbeke (Mar 4, 2013)

One possible solution is to make a list after going through a few tracks on shuffle mode at home. Then, set up your mobile device to play the entirety of those pieces when you are out.

Classical music's longer pieces mean that my shuffling ways have to change if I want whole pieces. If I am not in the mood for something specific, I will randomize the composer or piece, but I will generally then find a way to play the whole thing at once.

If you are taking 20-80 minutes to listen to a symphony or concerto, why not join up the tracks as you go or have it happen in the background on another piece while the one you chose is playing? If you want to hear these more than one time in the future, it may well be worth the time to you. If you will not, you may find it time to prune your music library.


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I had hoped someone would have come up with something by now. It would take months to join all of my classical files in the proper order. I guess I'm just out of luck hearing something the way it was meant to be heard.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Stan Brown's system works very well for classical music. It's what I use after being frustrated by itunes and its utter lack of support for classical music for years.

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

It takes some time to get everything set up right (each work as its own album), but once you do, set your ipod to shuffle by album and you are golden. And you don't have to join tracks, which I agree would be insanely laborious. I've got it running my library of around 35,000 classical tracks and it does exactly what you seem to want it to do.

I don't, however, use his suggestion of swapping composer name and artist name; YMMV but keeping them in the correct spot works perfectly fine for me and my system of listening to music.


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## haydnfan (Apr 13, 2011)

KenOC said:


> I *think* the question is, can you shuffle on the album or symphony level on an iPhone or iPad without joining tracks.


Oh thanks that was the vital bit that I missed.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

The iPhone doesn't natively have album shuffle like the iPod does (boo!); however, there are apps that will allow you to shuffle by album *yay!* (Smart Shuffle is one). I don't know whether iPad does, but if it doesn't I would imagine that there are apps to allow that to shuffle by album as well.


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## gHeadphone (Mar 30, 2015)

gardibolt said:


> Stan Brown's system works very well for classical music. It's what I use after being frustrated by itunes and its utter lack of support for classical music for years.
> 
> http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunes.htm


Thanks @gardibolt, thats a great article with food for thought. I file everything under the genre Classical, i think im going to have to expand. I also like how he tags the composers with Surname, forename, dates. Might be a busy couple of days for gHeadphone coming up!


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Yeah, I set my iPod the other day for shuffling Baroque Chamber Music (or AA/Baroque in Brown's tagging system) and it was a delight. I also have smart playlists set up for all chamber music, piano, violin, orchestral to pick up more than one time period. As I say, it's some work to tag everything but once you get going it's pretty fast, especially if you already have everything ripped and in your itunes library. And once it's set, it works very well indeed. Since adopting Brown's system, I think I've listened to more classical music in the last two years than I have in the previous forty. I adore it.


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