Form, makam and usul information in MusicBrainz

[sertansenturk]

Right now these three are saved as tags either in the recordings or in the works. They have to be added to work attributes. We already have the list of names, but we have to confirm them with Kemal Karaosmanoglu. Moreoever we have to decide how to add them to recordings which do not have any work (e.g. improvisations)

[alastair]

For recordings with no works we should continue to use tags

On 28 January 2015 at 17:56, Sertan Senturk notifications@github.com wrote:

Right now these three are saved as tags either in the recordings or in the works. They have to be added to work attributes. We already have the list of names, but we have to confirm them with Kemal Karaosmanoglu. Moreoever we have to decide how to add them to recordings which do not have any work (e.g. improvisations)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/170.

[alastair]

To submit this data to musicbrainz we need an attribute name ("Makam"? We use 'Carnatic Raaga', etc) and an ordered list of all values that are in that attribute. Then I'll submit it, and we can work on the script to automatically convert tags to attributes.

[sertansenturk]

I agree with the recordings with no works. Additionally for audio recordings with multiple performances we can split the track metadata as done in http://musicbrainz.org/release/732f33fc-c373-46d2-a09a-545c03469766. This way we can avoid confusions due to the current sequence of tags (e.g. form2, makam3) too.

Regarding the lists I remember we put them somewhere a year ago. Do you remember where they are? Otherwise we have these three lists:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/teambox-assets/assets/228780/original/makams_alphabetic.txt?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4IWKKLUGH6MVPQA&Expires=1477472534&Signature=dKPKXbfIEdPn10WeruRQvvLFpAg%3D

s3.amazonaws.com/teambox-assets/assets/230490/original/Usuls_Alphabetic.txt?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4IWKKLUGH6MVPQA&Expires=1477472523&Signature=1aad%2BSUk4nMWxkuo8MDqsmw9vlg%3D

s3.amazonaws.com/teambox-assets/assets/230493/original/forms_Alphabetic.txt?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4IWKKLUGH6MVPQA&Expires=1477472521&Signature=bvpMUiHBC6gtUJxRB5uMcauKOPA%3D

[alastair]

I remember seeing them, but can't find them in my email. Let's work from this list

[sertansenturk]

Just to confirm: We are going to ask Kemal these right?

• What to do with the numbered usuls (e.g. 2+2+3)
• If we should merge the usuls in the list with a rhythmic explanation (e.g. "Aksak" vs. "Aksak (9/4)")
• If we should merge the makams in the list with a transposition (e.g. "Segâh" vs."Segâh (Çargâh'ta)")

If there's nothing else, I'll send him an email right away..

[alastair]

Yes, that's a good list to ask

[georgid]

I think as well it is good list. I think the tag should be called "turkish makam" to disambiguate from the MAQAM used in arabic music tradition. IMHO the lists should be as extensive as possible, but as well not too cumbersome for our purposes. From this perspective, "Segâh (Çargâh'ta)" is better than "Segâh" because it can be used as ground truth for tonic identification, but then it should be in formatting easy to work with like .e.g. "Segâh-Çargâh'ta"

[sertansenturk]

Kemal has just replied to my mail:

• We can remove the usuls with the numbers (e.g. 2+2+3). They are there for a few examples of folk music which do not adhere to any rhythm template.
• The rhythmic explanations (mertebe in Turkish; e.g. "Aksak" vs. "Aksak (9/4)") can be merged.
• The transpositions (e.g. "Segâh" vs."Segâh (Çargâh'ta)") can be merged.

He also quickly went through the documents and said there is no need to change anything else.

I prepared the documents according to these comments:

• Makam: https://docs.google.com/a/upf.edu/spreadsheets/d/1s95kf8XHYRnHPzMzuxU36-OZN7BLhlqs7PMuzvmgrac/edit?usp=sharing
• Usul: https://docs.google.com/a/upf.edu/spreadsheets/d/1xAKnN06E8uu3xE-gzE0drRnuXP6zKKNGZSWbOCtT2k4/edit?usp=sharing
• Form: https://docs.google.com/a/upf.edu/spreadsheets/d/1FzStTOd98KIf3TGd8MmGkSxvOLq81K2zIB4CrWwBNPs/edit?usp=sharing

[sertansenturk]

We should also check whether the current makam, usul and form tags in Musicbrainz have any extras (and aliases) or not.

[sertansenturk]

@alastair mentioned that we can add the mertebe and transposition information too. I will prepare a list before we submit the proposal to MusicBrainz people.

[alastair]

Can you please put these three spreadsheets in the "Makam lists" sheet in CompMusic/Dunya in drive (where the instruments list is)

[sertansenturk]

Done!

[alastair]

Data is added to musicbrainz. 2 more tasks remain - #203, to add missing works, and also migrate our data from tags (or from mu2 files??) to works that already exist in musicbrainz.

[alastair]

@andrebola will work on copying existing tags to work attributes.

• Get a list of all makam works. You can do this by using makam.models.Work.objects.all(), or by scraping musicbrainz (get all releases in the collection, get all recordings in the release, get all works of the recordings)
• See if we have metadata for this work. You can check this by seeing if they are in the API: http://dunya.compmusic.upf.edu/document/manager/collection/makam-symbtr/files and http://dunya.compmusic.upf.edu/document/by-id/d4618e3b-3d64-4538-9a28-67eb063a42f0/symbtrmu2. You can also see if there is a docserver.models.SourceFile with SourceFileType = symbtrmu2 and a Document with external_identifier set to the work mbid
• Download the file from dunya and open it with iso8859-9 encoding (Important - don't use iso8859-1).
• See here for how to understand the format of the mu2 file to extract makam, form, and usul: https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/180#issuecomment-79163750
• Check 3 sources of metadata: mu2 file, work tags, recording tags. If all are in agreement, make a change to the work to add these 3 attributes. If they are not in agreement, print what the problem is
• If you make a change to the work attributes, we must delete tags from musicbrainz. We cannot do this ourselves, so we should make a list of mbid/tag data and we will talk to the MusicBrainz developers about this

[alastair]

Note that there may not always be a mu2 file for a work that is in musicbrainz. In this situation we should only look at tags from works and recordings.

[sertansenturk]

I have a quick question, previously we talked about adding mertebe and transposition (mentioned in https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/170#issuecomment-72939597 and https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/170#issuecomment-73089471) information to usul and makam attributes, repectively. Will it be added to MusicBrainz later or is it dropped?

[alastair]

ah - we forgot about it, and they weren't in the spreadsheet. We can request for them to be added later.

On 10 June 2015 at 15:16, Sertan Senturk notifications@github.com wrote:

I have a quick question, previously we talked about adding mertebe and transposition (explained in #170 (comment) https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/170#issuecomment-72939597) : #170 (comment) https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/170#issuecomment-73089471 information to usul and makam attributes, repectively. Will it be added to MusicBrainz later or is it dropped?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/170#issuecomment-110746832.

[sertansenturk]

Me too! I opened a separate issue for mertebe and transpositions: https://github.com/MTG/dunya/issues/214

[alastair]

Done