Below is the main window for the Beyond Category application, where all the data entry for an album occurs.
Components of the Albums Window
1 General Album Information
The fields at the top of the window pertain to the general information about the album. Except for the star rating, these fields are updated using the 3 step edit mode – press New Album or Edit Album, enter data, press Save.
A note about the File Artist field – 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.
2 Album List
Every album entered will show up in this list. Clicking on an entry in the list will cause the data for that album to be displayed in the Albums window fields.
The field above the album list is used for searching albums. This field is not a lookup type field. It will search looking for the typed text contained anywhere in the target field. For instance, if searching for an album title, just typing the word “blue” would bring up the album Kind of Blue.
The radio buttons below the field will filter the search. Clicking the Album radio button will allow searching by album title. Clicking the Artist radio button will allow searching by File Under artist for the album. Clicking the Sideman radio button will allow searching by sideman entered for the album.
3 Track List
Tracks entered for the album are listed here. The information for tracks is entered in the Tracks tab to the left of the Track List. Clicking on any track entry in the list will display the full information about the track in Tracks tab.
4 Tracks/Personnel/Notes/Cover Tabs
Tracks Tab
Adding or modifying tracks uses the 2 step edit mode. The song field located at the top of the tab is a lookup field. Selecting a song there will automatically fill in the composer list at the below right of the song field.
The MM-DD-YYYY fields are for the specific recording date if known. If the exact date of the recording is not known, use the free format Text Date. If a text date is entered, for instance as “Spring 1959”, a specific date should be entered also for sorting purposes. In the case of entering “Spring 1959” as the Text Date, one might enter 4-1-1959 as the specific date. If a text date is entered, the specific date will not show on any reports. It will only be used to sort tracks in date order where needed.
Pressing the Add button will add the entered fields to the track list. Pressing Change will update the selected track in the track list with the entered fields.
Playlists can be created using the Playlist window. The playlists will be displayed in the list at the bottom of the Tracks tab. Dragging a track from the Track List to the a list entry in the playlist list will add it to that Playlist.
Personnel Tab
Use the Personnel tab to add performers to the tracks. Personnel can be added to tracks by selecting a person in the Person lookup field, entering an instrument in the Playing field and then pressing the Add button. The Person and Playing field must be entered to enable the Add button. When adding, the person will be added to all the selected tracks in the track list.
The Track Personnel list shows all the personnel for a single track. The Collective Album Personnel list on the left shows each distinct person on the album, regardless of which track is selected.
Personnel can also be added to selected track(s) by selecting names from the Collective list and dragging them to the Track Personnel list.
Clicking the Auto-fill Playing Field will cause the Playing field to be automatically filled in with whatever skill entered for the player on the Artist window. 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.
Notes Tab
Use this tab 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.
Cover Tab
Drag any image from your computer to the image place holder in the Cover tab. The image will be added to the database and added to the list at the right using the file name of the image. After adding the image, the Name and Caption field can be entered. Use the Update button to save any info typed into those fields.
The images are stored on the database as full size. The display of the images is scaled down to fit the space on the tab. It is recommended that images be scaled before adding to the database to save space, but it is not necessary.