Beyond Category Albums Window

Album Info Panel

The Albums window is the primary window for Beyond Category. It is here where you will enter new albums along with the tracks and personnel for the window. This window has two panels.

Album Info where you enter the general information about the album as shown in the image above.
Track Info where you enter the track and personnel info as shown in the image below.

Entry Fields for Album Info Panel

Title – The title of the album. This field can be left blank. This can be handy in the case of 78rpm discs that don’t have a title. When not adding or entering an album, this field is a lookup field allowing you to navigate directly to an album in the database.
File Artist – This is the name the album would be filed under. This should not be considered as part of the personnel listing for the album. This field designates how you would expect the album to be categorized if looking for it in an old-fashioned record store. A various artist collection would be filed under “Various Artists” – not the name of a real person. You can create a name in the Personnel window of “various artists” to handle this.
Cat. Num. – The catalog number of the album. This field may or may not be available and is optional.
Label – The name of the recording label that issued the album.
Value – An optional field that allows the tracking of the value placed on the album.
Volumes – This field defaults to 1, but can be changed to note the total number of items in a multi-volume set.
Flag – This checkbox can be used for any purpose designated by the user. It is meant to be a temporary data point. You might be in a process of deciding albums that are to be brought to a party, or doing an inventory of your albums and checking off the entries that are found where they belong. This flag can be cleared for the entire database using the Edit->Clear Album Flags menu item.
Album Rating – Rate your albums on a 5 star basis. This rating can be changed without using the Edit Album button. Remove all stars by using the contextual menu item brought up by right button clicking on any star.
Grade – Use this popup to set the grade of the album. Use the Preferences window Set Popups panel to add, edit or remove values for this popup.
Format – Use this popup to set the format for the album. Use the Preferences window Set Popups panel to add, edit or remove values for this popup.
Location – Use this popup to set the location for the album. Use the Preferences window Set Popups panel to add, edit or remove values for this popup.
Release Date – Enter the release date of the album. The order of the month, day, year fields are determined by the date settings on your computer. European users can expect to see a day, month, year order. This is an optional field.
Buy Date – Enter the date you purchased the album. The display order of this field works the same as the Release Date. This is an optional field.
Album Tags – Check any number of boxes to describe the genre of your album. Use the Preferences window Set Popups panel to add, edit or remove values for these tags.

The list below the entry fields will display the albums entered. You can use the Album Filter window to narrow the list display. See the section on using the Album Filter for more information.

Track Info Panel

The track info panel is where you can see the details about your album. On the left of the panel is the list of tracks entered. On the right are 3 sub-panels: Tracks, Personnel, and Notes.

Entry Fields for Tracks Panel

Here is where you enter the information about each track. Unlike the Album Info panel, you do not need to first press a New or Edit button before entering data. You go right to the field entry and press Add or Change to save what you’ve entered.

Song Title – This is a lookup field. You type in the first few characters of the song title and then select the appropriate match from the drop down list. When you select a song the composer names for that song are listed in the box to the right.
Timing – Enter the minutes and seconds for the track timing. This is an optional field. If you enter nothing, the time will show as 00 : 00 on the window, but in reports it will show as blank.
MM-DD-YYY (or DD-MM-YYYY if using European standard dates) – This will be the recording date for the track.
Text Date – Many times, an exact date for the recording is not known. In these cases, you may want to enter something like “early Spring, 1998” or just a month and year. In these cases, you should also enter a specific date in the MM-DD-YYYY field that approximates the date. This is for sorting purposes only. Anytime a text date is used, that is the date that will show on any reports or lists in place of the MM-DD-YYYY date.
Track – In most cases, Beyond Category will auto increment the track number for you when you select a new song in the Song Title field. But, if the same song appears twice in a row on an album or if you are entering songs out of order then you’ll have to enter the track number yourself.
Side – The default entry for side is 1. It is up to the user to change this as necessary.
Circa – This checkbox is a legacy feature from the early days of Beyond Category. Originally there was no text date feature and this checkbox was used to notate that a date is approximate. It can still be used and when it is, dates show in the report with a “ca.” after them.
Medley – Use this checkbox to indicate a song is part of a medley.
Track Rating – Use this the same way as the Album Rating. It will only apply to the selected track in the track list.
Image art – Drop a .jpg or .png image in the rectangle. In the case of the example screen shot above, you would drop the image on top of the Kind of Blue album cover art. When that happens, Beyond Category adds the image to the database and places the file name in the Name field. The list on the right of the image will list all the images you’ve entered for that album. You can drop any size image to be added to the database, but it is recommended to use some kind of image processing software to scale the image down to a size of about 100kb or so. Dropping full size images will swiftly increase the size of your database to what will be unmanageable for some users.
Name – Change the file name to use whatever name you prefer.
Caption – You can enter a caption for the image. At this time, images are not printed in any reports so captions don’t have any significant use unless you just want to write something about the image for your own use when viewing the album. This may change in the future. After entering data in the Name or Caption field, press the Update button to save the changes.

Personnel Panel

Personnel sub-panel on the Track Info panel

The personnel panel is where you will add the personnel that produced the tracks. You must select at least one song in the track list before adding or removing personnel. There is no editing of the personnel added. If an incorrect name is added, remove the name in the list by using the delete key and then re-add the correct name. You can add or remove a person to or from one, some or all tracks at one time depending on the selection made in the track list.

You will notice there is a Collective Album Personnel list and a Track Personnel list. You can only add to the Track Personnel list. Beyond Category automatically adds or removes names from the collective list as you add or remove. As you click on different tracks in the track list, the Track Personnel will be updated. The collective personnel list remains the same regardless of which tracks are selected.

Entry Fields for Personnel Panel

Person – This is a lookup field where you can select the person you want to add to the selected track(s).
Role – This is the role the artist is playing on the track. In some cases, an artist may have several roles on one track. For instance, doubling on reeds or playing an instrument and singing. Just keep adding the combinations. Only valid instruments can be entered. The Add button will not activate until a valid instrument and artist combination is entered. Instead of typing the instrument you can use the popup menu to select an instrument.
Auto-fill Playing Field – If this checkbox is checked, Beyond Category will automatically fill in the role using the skill entered when the personnel entry was made in the Songs/Personnel/Labels window. You can manually override this if the skill is not the desired role. For instance, John Coltrane may be entered in the Artist window with a skill field of ts for tenor sax. That skill would automatically be entered in the Playing field whenever his name is selected in the Person lookup field. Should it be that in the particular track being updated he is playing soprano sax (ss) then the Playing field can be overridden with that value before adding Coltrane to the track.

Personnel can be added to selected track(s) by pressing the Add button or by selecting names from the Collective list and dragging them to the Track Personnel list.

Notes Panel

Use this panel to add any free form information to the album record. Press Edit Notes button to add or edit the note, press the Save Notes button to save your work.

Adding, Editing, Deleting Albums

There are 3 buttons used to Add, Edit or Delete albums: New Album, Edit Album and Delete Album. These buttons will have their text labels change according to the context of the process. For instance, the Delete Album button is changed to Cancel Edits when the Edit Album button is pressed.

Whether adding an album or editing an existing album, the steps are the same. Press either the New Album button or the Edit Album button to put the window into edit mode. If New Album is pressed, the Edit Album button will change to a Save New button and the Delete Album button will change to a Cancel New button. If Edit Album is pressed, the Edit Album button will change to a Save Edits button and the Delete Album button will change to a Cancel Edits button. In both cases, the New Button will be disabled and dimmed.

If adding, the fields above the buttons are blanked out in preparation for the new entry. If editing, all the fields are left as is, but you can change them to the values you prefer. Nothing is saved until the Save New or Save Edits button is pressed. If you decide not to save the changes, press the Cancel New or Cancel Edits button and that will restore the window to its state previous to the pressing of the New Album or Edit Album button.

When saving changes, BC will check to see that a valid File Artist and Label are entered. In not, the save will be rejected, the computer will beep and the cursor will be placed in the missing field.

It is worth noting that typing an entry in the File Artist or Label field is only for the purpose of “looking up” a personnel or label entry that is already in the database. These fields must have been previously entered using the Songs/Personnel/Labels window.

To Delete an album, simply press the Delete Album button. You will be presented with a modal dialog window reminding you that there is no undo for deleting an album and asking you to confirm if you really want to delete or would you like to cancel the request to delete. Pressing the Cancel button will do exactly that and restore the window to its state before the Delete Album button was pressed. Pressing the Delete button will remove the album from the database and then refresh the window with another album from the database. To be clear: there is no recovery of the data if an album is deleted.

Holding down the Ctrl key when pressing the Delete Album button will bypass the nag “are you sure” window and immediately delete the album. Be sure this is what you want before using this feature.

Download
Beyond Category Macintosh
Version: 8.7

Download
Beyond Category Windows
Version: 8.7

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