Building the Digital Beast III: Feeding the iPod

(Ed. Note: This is Part III of our series on how to live digitally and still have a satisfying portable classical music experience. Part I is on how to meta-tag mp3 files. Part II was about building playlists. iPod, Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

When 150 gigs of pocket storage is no longer enough.

Coconut headphones, designed by Iwan Roberts.
Image © 2011 Experience-It-All.com

One of the nice things about city living: when your CD collection gets too big for its shelves, you can always add another bookcase. Or get a bigger apartment. Or a storage unit. Or move into your storage...I've said too much.

Unfortunately, that's not the case with the iPod. The largest current model of this device that Apple has available (the iPod Classic) is marketed at 160 gigabytes. With is onboard operating system, it actually holds about 147 gigs. My "classical" Pod holds (an average) of 23,000 songs. That's about 82 days worth of music, which is more than is needed but it's nice to have it all in one place. 

Here's the catch. My MacBookPro holds a lot more. And in addition to Beethoven, Brahms and Berlioz, it has plenty of Blue Öyster Cult--which I don't want to mix in with my classical music library. 

This post shows you use iTunes in a slightly different way to make sure that your digital device holds the content that you want. 

Build your playlists.

We talked about playlists in the last article. You can set one up that will auto-fill the iPod using only music from your classical section. The easy way to do this is to meta-tag all the classical music in the Composer field in this format: 

Composer Name (Birth Year-Death Year). For example: Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Set up a Smart Playlist like so:

Composer [field contains] [(1]. 

The computer will then search out every file meta-tagged with those symbols: the paranthesis and the number 1 from the date of birth. i.e. all of your classical music, opera, chamber music etc.)

Since "(1" is a poor name for a playlist, rename it. How's "New Classical and Opera Playlist." Sounds snappy.

The smart playlist field, set to grab everything meta-tagged with "(1"

You can also set your playlist to a particular size, say limiting it to 20 gigabytes or 30 gigs, depending on how big a library you want to import. But this doesn't give you any control over what goes into the playlist. 

You can make and add as many playlists as you like--and they don't have to be "smart." I usually keep a cycle of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, a complete Ring cycle, and a few other playlists I like living in my iPod. Others, I rotate in and out and keep updating. More playlists means an easier to use iPod. 

Tip: Remember to find out what the capacity of your iPod is and leave at least 1 gigabyte empty for the operating system, the library filing, and the RAM needed for it to operate efficiently.

Connect your iPod. It will appear (in the left hand column) under "Devices." It is factory-set to start trying to update automatically. Click on the little "(x)" in the top bar to make it stop.

The iTunes status bar. The (x) is on the right.

Then under the 'music' tab, set it to 'Add select songs and playlists. Four windows will pop up. They look like this:

The Set Playlists window.

Find your playlist with the "(1" in it. Click the box next to it. A check mark appears.

Hit "Apply Changes." Your iPod will update. Your brand new classical playlist will load itself into your iPod.

Tick off the boxes of the items you want uploaded

This same procedure can be used to update other Apple devices: iPod Touch, Shuffle, iPod Mini, and the iPhone. For smaller devices, you can build a decent library using just albums. Scroll down the list of playlists. Albums and artists will come up as fields. Scroll through your albums. Select the ones you want to update. And for iPhones, be sure to leave a gig free for the phone to function properly.

Building the Digital Beast II: The Playlist

(Ed. Note: This is Part II of our series on how to live digitally and still have a satisfying portable classical music experience. Part I is on how to meta-tag mp3 files. Part III is about managing the iPod. iPod, iPod Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

How to use Playlists to manage your iPod.

If Bach had his playlists organized....

Hi there. In Part II, we're going to talk about managing playlists on iTunes to maximize your classical music experience.

So you've got all (or at least some) of your music uploaded/downloaded into your computer. The next step is to use the Playlist feature to effectively become your own classical music DJ.

There are three types of iTunes playlist:

The regular Playlist is just an ordinary tool to put your tracks in a prearranged order. It takes the most work, but gives you the greatest amount of control.

For the classical music aficionado or opera lover who wants to play all the Bruckner symphonies in order, or perhaps listen to the entire Ring over a week, playlists are invaluable. But of the three, the regular Playlists are the most important because you can do heavy customization, putting just what you want in the desired order.

Customized Bruckner playlist with the movements of the symphonies in the right order.

Smart Playlists are built from your library to fit a set of prearranged conditions. Those conditions are based on data meta-tags on files, or on other data relevant to the tracks. For example: here's an all-Bruckner smart playlist I made a few years ago. It was generated with the tags "Composer--Starts With--Anton Bruckner":

Computer-generated "smart" playlist with the running order slightly jumbled.

For example, you can grab all the works tagged with "Anton Bruckner" or all the pieces conducted by "Riccardo Chailly." This is why having accurate meta-tags are important. Smart playlists can also grab any movements or pieces that last a specific amount of time, or meet some other criteria that you set yourself using the Notes field.

The third type of playlist is called On-the-Go and is generated by your handy-dandy iPod. You can add to it by hi-lighting a track with the click-wheel, and pressing the center button. The track will blink and be added to the list. You can also add whole artist folders, composer folders, what-have-you to the list.

However, when you re-sync your iPod with iTunes, the On-the-Go playlists will automatically update, purging the main list and saving your old one as "On the Go 1," or "2" or whatever number you are up to.

Next post, we'll talk about managing an iPod and what you do when your library is too big for your device.

Building the Digital Beast

(Ed. Note: This is Part I of our series on how to live digitally and still have a satisfying portable classical music experience. Part II is on how to build and manage playlists. Part III is about managing the iPod. iPod, iPod Touch, Mini, Shuffle, iTunes, and iPhone are of course, trademarks of Apple.)

How to manage classical music in your iTunes.

If Beethoven had read this article, he would have
filed his Karajan recordings correctly, too.
Photo from Teapot Shortage.

Superconductor could not function without a massive iTunes library, accessible anytime on my Mac with two finger movements. I also keep updating the "Classical iPod", 155.5 gigs of carefully organized works--and the newer iPhone, with less storage capacity but a greater chance that my listening experience will be interruptive.

The challenge of keeping any classical music library updated is compounded by two things: the generally poor quality of CDDB (CD Database) listings, which drive iTunes' ability to assign names to your music) and that there is no existing industry standard or naming conventions applied across the board to classical music. Even if there were, nobody wants to pay coders or web people to do it. So it never gets done.

I did it, and at present, have about 200 gigs of music, relatively well organized. Here's how I solved the problem. Maybe it will help you follow suit.

Step One: Balkanize the Genre tab.
iTunes' factory setting has just one assigned genre for "classical" music. Everything in one field. Useless.

I divide works as follows:

• 20th Century: any instrumental music written 1900-2000.
• Cantata: Sung works for small ensemble. Lots of Bach.
• Chamber Music: Everything for small ensemble except string quartets.
• Concerto: if it has a soloist vs. an orchestra, it's in here. Includes piano concertos and violin concertos.
• Harpsichord: Like piano, but plucked. Solo works in here.
• Lieder: all art songs, even if they're not in German.
• Opera: The queen of arts.
• Operetta: because I roll like that.
• Oratorio: Religious-themed stage works. Lots of Handel.
• Orchestral: Catch-all category: tone poems, overtures, waltzes, etc.
• Piano: A soloist battling 88 keys. Some duo works for four hands.
• Sacred Music: Masses, motets. You know, church music.
• Symphony: If it is designated "symphony" by its composer, it goes here. From C.P.E. Bach to P. Glass.
• Violin: Solo and duo works for that instrument.

Now here's the good part. You can do this quickly. Select your files. (albums). Hit Command-I. An info box pops up. iTunes will ask you if you "think it is a good idea to edit this many files at once." It is.
Go to the Genre field at the bottom. Type in your new Genre. Wait for it to compile and presto-change-o, you've started to Balkanize your massive "classical" collection.

Step Two: Standardize your Fields: 
Once you decide what genre your files are, it's easy to start changing the fields to suit your music needs. You can change many of these fields at once for multiple files, and ITunes will reorganize your folders in your Library, putting the "books" on the right shelves. This is just the method that works for me, and I thought I'd share it.


Pick a disc of Beethoven symphonies. Let's say Herbert von Karajan, conducting the Beethoven Fifth. The 1981 cycle he did in Berlin. Here's how it looks, freshly downloaded from Amazon.com:

The Song Title field is all right, but the rest is a mess. The album is called "Beethoven?" Really useful. The composer's name is spelled wrong and there are no dates on him (I use the dates for search functions in playlists. May explain that later.) And worst of all, the artist is "Herbert von Karajan" with "Berliner Philharmoniker" broken out into a seperate field.

• Artist, Album Artist: for an orchestra, put the name of the orchestra (in English) with the name of the conductor. Like so: Berlin Philharmonic cond. Herbert von Karajan. You can do these for all works with the same orchestra and conductor and when they load into an iPod or iPhone they'll all wind up in the same folder.
• Album: should reflect a clear, unique folder for these recordings, One of the problems with iTunes is that two albums with the same title will wind up in the same folder in your iTunes. That can make "Beethoven Fifth Symphony" a very large file if you own more than one recording. Adding the conductor's name can clarify matters. If a conductor (like von Karajan) made multiple recordings of a work, add the date as a marker. So: Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, 5 Karajan 1981.
• Composer: Services like CDDB and Amazon have strange ideas about spelling the names of composers, or only using their last names. So you might have files tagged with "Beethoven", "Ludwig Vanbeethoven" or even "LvB." Choose a STANDARD style that works for you. I like this format: Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).

Here is the same file after a quick cleanup:

The Song Title is unaltered. Album is now called "Beethoven: Symphony No. 4, 5 Karajan 1981." This gives you the pieces, the conductor's name, and (important for Karajan) which cycle it is of the four he recorded in his lifetime. Composer's name is now spelt right, with those useful dates. And the Artist and Genre fields have been corrected.

That's pretty much it. Hope this helps you get started uploading (or downloading) your music and getting your portable classical collection to a place where everything is as it should be.