The LMB Songlist - some thoughts

[Keli]

Last night, for reasons I won't bore you with, Andune Ensemble played some of the 3 part songs in the LMB songlist. Now I knew that some of the songs in the playlist needed cleaning up from when Astleigh was setting up the web site. But I was just checking the index of the songs not listening to them.

From our experience last night it is obvious that some songs are plain bad transcriptions and some are completely broken. Frankly it was an embarrassment to play them. I had previously resolved not to have a separate list for Andune but to use the LMB list but now I feel I may have to change that approach.

So, the question is, do we care enough to do anything about it?

There are options:

a) Retain a LMB Songlist but clean up and/or delete "bad" songs - lots of work obviously

b) Archive the LMB songlist (accessible if required) and have each band keep its own songlist available via Kira's portal - means duplication of files but should ensure quality control as songs will have been tested and played

c) Archive the existing LMB songlist but start a new one initially populated with the existing band songlists

d) Just leave it

Solos/duets would need special treatment as they do not usually form part of any band's songlist. But I (with help from other musicians) would be happy to playtest every solo/duet we have for quality control.

Thoughts please. Am I worrying about this unnecessarily?

[Kiralynn]

I, too, am loathe to play songs from the LMB list in public unless I have tried them out privately before.
Obviously, if I see (Aeg) or (Keli) or other stamps, those are guarantees of quality.

I wonder if this is simply a matter of manpower. Perhaps if someone stepped in to verify all the songs, we could update the master list?

I recently went through all of the holiday music and fixed (or deleted) anything that didn't play well. I also updated the names and tags. It was a lot of work, but now the collection at roll3d6.com/music is entirely safe to play in public.

Astleigh, if you need any help pouring through the master list of songs, let us know. I'm sure you'll have plenty of volunteers. I'm sure maintaining the list is a lot more work, now that there are twice as many bands and three times as many people submitting music.

[Aldekim]

Our playlist has grown so rapidly it is not realistic to assume everything has been playtested IN-GAME. In our GHMS work we have discovered that other abc players do not render songs true to how they will sound in game. For that reason, among others, we never perform a song we have not playtested thoroughly in game.

[Kiralynn]

I just went through the first 1/3 of the songs in the "Play At Your Own Risk" list.
They're cleaned up and have had single musician testing to make sure they play.
I'll do the rest of the songs as time permits. That should add a LOT of songs to our "safe" list.
Eventually I will need some folks to help me test the multi-part songs to make sure they sound good.

[Beorbrand]

I agree completely. It is difficult, I feel, to impose strict rules on new content entering the list when half the information it already contains is rubbish. I would like to see us have a robust playlist full of sound arrangments and compositions. A few of the files in the playlist are straight off the Fat Lute, and leave much to be desired.

[Aldekim]

I would be willing to dedicate some time to in-game playtesting. All songs should be tested in-game before going on the official LMB playlist.

[Astleigh]

Before people volunteer to start cleaning up the songlist, I think we should wait to see which option listed by Keli has the most support.

I am leaning towards option B. Here is my reasoning:

When I took over maintaining the playlist, LMB didn't have the level of in-game music activity that it does now. There was almost no activity apart from a few of us participating in outside music groups such as EMS and GHMS.

I agree that many of the legacy songs in the LMB playlist are pretty bad. I have no sentimental attachment to them, but held onto them for fear of stepping on someone else's toes. However, I don't think its worth worrying about anymore as I've rarely seen the band play those old songs.

So I think the state of the LMB playlist is only confusing and frustrating people at this point. I expect those who have transcribed songs know which of their songs are play-tested, and its not too much trouble for people to create zip files of their works. Having your own playlists also gives you more autonomy.

What do you think?

[Runesdaeg]

I'm still somewhat newerish to everything musical (basically, I play ABC files but I leave the making of and messing with them to others), but if you need anything play tested and I'm online, I'd be quite happy to come help. Also, I can play test any solo stuff on my own and report back (as long as it's with an instrument I've got).

[Keli]

I agree with Astleigh in favouring option B but can also accept option C.

With B, the only work to be done would be in testing and producing a list of solo/duets (making the assumption that 3 and above belong in band lists). I know Kira has done some work here and I and others can help/double check. I'm sure Kira and/or I can host and maintain these songs.

[Floradine]

Does option B mean that there is no *maintained* LMB list anymore?

If yes: What about the "good" songs in there? Before we "scrap" (or archive and mark as "play on your own risk") the LMB list as a whole we should try to filter out the bad ones and retain the good ones. I think we should form an "editorial staff" who will work through the songs once and do the filtering. It for sure has no use when people leave the room (as happened at the horse racing event) because the music is boring or even bad. But we should make sure to keep the nuggets, if there are any. After all it is not *so* easy to have a large collection of multi-part abc's where we can choose songs from for concerts. We could use the same naming which many of us use now and name them like "x-(LMB)name.abc". This naming convention would then be a sign that the song went through an editorial process and is a good one.

[Keli]

That is right Flora - option B would remove the single LMB playlist and split it among the various band lists.

Option C would allow for a central list. If we took this approach, then I would envisage a small team checking and coming up with a final list. BUT this would require onward maintenence to add new songs.

[Floradine]

I see.

Still I would go through the LMB list and fetch the nuggets out there. Then we would have two unmaintained lists:

1. "LMB safe to play - unmaintained"
2. "LMB use on own risk - unmaintained"

Just to keep the good ones and mark them as "safe to play".

[Lennidhren]

I would not want to see the LMB playlist entirely gone/split into separate collections - for the sake of efficient Old Winyards rehearsals. It's a lot easier for the OW bandleader to direct people to http://tinyurl.com/oldwinyards to grab one zipfile, than to direct them to a depot and tell them to grab collections A, C, D, and F for tonight's purposes. It would be good to periodically go through the playlist and cull the broken/poor quality songs so we can guarantee that if we get a group together and play something in there impromptu, we won't be embarrassed by it. But the playlist certainly has outgrown the point where that's a task for one person What about creating a Music Committee to work with Astleigh on maintaining the playlist? The committee could meet say, monthly, or quarterly, to go over songs that have been submitted to the playlist but not yet tested in game. Then they'd make a list of the ones that are up to LMB standards and Astleigh could add those to the next playlist version. The committee's first task would be to go through the current playlist, behemoth that it is, and purge the songs that are low quality. After that's done, they could meet every few months for maintenance and playtesting. We should keep an archive copy of the old LMB playlist though, in case we end up purging any songs that someone was dreadfully fond of.

So...who wants to volunteer for this job? :-)

[Floradine]

Me.

You certainly have a point, Lenn.

In my opinion this can be done easily. The members of the "QA committee" could start by going through the list on their own with abc player, marking those which they think need to be sorted out. This could even be split up so one does the songs from A to C, the next from D to F and so on. Thus the workload could be spread across the available shoulders. At given evenings the members would meet in game and evaluate if the "delete from list" mark is justified. So the final decision is also made by more than just one voice.

It might be the case that just the instrumentation of a song is bad but when changed a bit the whole song might turns out to be nice and can be rescued. And having many ears listening to a song in question might more likely lead to make such corrections rather than stripping it.

[Cennwyn]

I don't mind helping play-test the multi-part songs, but I don't have the ear to judge whether something might be "off" (I can tell when it's really bad, but when the problem is more subtle, well...)

So: if someone needs me to bang on the drum for a few hours one day, let me know