Organizing the collection
soundsreal
128 Posts
The collection is reaching the point where strictly alphabetical or strictly by genre and then alphabetized by genre isn't making sense for me like it used to. Where to put Donald Byrd for example? In the Jazz section or funk/fusion? and how about Herbie? Or funky foreign language stuff from overseas?
Can anyone offer up any pointers or tell what works for you well? Hopefully someone who actually listens to their records - a lot - and not just collects them for aesthetic or future profit, because I think the way a person interacts with their collection will have an impact on what methods will work. THanx in advance!
Can anyone offer up any pointers or tell what works for you well? Hopefully someone who actually listens to their records - a lot - and not just collects them for aesthetic or future profit, because I think the way a person interacts with their collection will have an impact on what methods will work. THanx in advance!
Comments
Personally I file my records alphabetically by the artist who sampled it from Aaliyah to Xzibit.
laserwolf that's interesting I've never heard of that before. Do you put the sampling song with the sampled?
I have everything alphabetized by artist in one section, Hip Hop in another, and my old Punk, metal, Ska records in another. I've been consolidating and clearing out the collection lately, and I'm feeling like just putting everything together.
Ultimately it will end up reflecting the way I think of the music at any one time, but I think that may be something that changes as the collection changes, which is why I'm interested in hearing about what others are doing. ya feel me? I'm diggin how you go freestyle with it though
I hear you.
I was actually going to describe my 'system', but then I realized that it's way too complicated and probably wouldn't make sense (or be useful) to anyone but me, so I bailed.
Collecting stuff from around the world isn't helping things any.
Respect. Thanks for your 2 piece's of eight anyways
Both started their careers in Jazz and returned there later in life, and both brought a Jazz approach to their funkier stuff. I'm also pretty sure that both would describe themselves as Jazz musicians.
That's logical. Thanks for the help.
that said, only recently pulled myself together and split the records up into genre sections.
this makes it much easier to find stuff and navigate, ive had a 10k limit for acouple years.
file breakdown:
jazzfunk / instrumental funk soul
east euro joints mixed
library and jazz dance
moog synth electronic
world: latin, middle east, african, asian ect
sleeze cheese budget popish
compilation lps
soundtracks and musicals
US rock
US psych
UK rock
UK prog psych
krautrock
euro rock: france, italy, spain, greece, holland ect
scandinavian rock: denmark, sweden, ect
soul (pre 1975)
soul (post 75)
spoken word, words only
12's
45's
hiphop rap electro
playout recs party
playout recs obscure
trades
sales
overlaps might happen here and there!
Yeah, that comes pretty close to how I organise it. Put the records on alphabet within it's section. I have Yusef Lateef in my jazz section, jazz-funk section, Impulse section & CTI section for instance & know exactly where to look for when I need one of his records. But I can imagine it is diffucult filing certain records from time to time... Let's say a straight jazz record by Lonnie Smith from 2009. Needs to be together with the other 15+ jazzfunk lp's by him but there's not 1 funky song on there. Also don't want to file it next to an old Blue Note record by Horace Silver in the jazz section. But finding a solution for this, is what keeps us going I guess. Hahahaha
peace.
And it's damn hard since I put all the Japanese only releases together having Herbie's Flood & Hubbard's Gleam in there next to the Teruo Nakamura's & Terumasa Hino's
if you hgave 10 brazilian records file them in World but if you have 65 they get their own section
i don't file alphabetically i just do genre then artist, then historically and organize artists by relevance
so my soul section will be divided into male,female,group
in male marvin,stevie,al,isaac are placed ahead of jerry butler let's say
in the jazz miles quartet will be before electric stuff etc
basically i have to 8square expedit
SOUL:female male
FUNK/GROUPSOUL/REGGAE
LATIN
BRAZILIAN
JAZZ (2 squares)
QUEBEC
NEW ARRIVALS+undefinables
SOUNDTRACKS/LIBRARY
DISCO/BOOGIE
WORLD/ETHNIC
REVOLUTIONARY/HISTORIC
HIPHOP
ROCK/FOLK
FRANCE
CLASSICAL
Always purge before hitting up a record show!
Being Polish, I definitely like giving my Polish records a good spot in the collection. I have a Polish sub-section in my jazz section, and all the Polish rock/folk/whatever records have their own section. Eastern Europe (including Melodiya) has another section where they are all mashed together alphabetically. I decided to file my Mongolian LPs on Melodiya in that section too, even though they really should live in the Asia section. I have a Japan section too. I guess there is an autobiographical component: I'm Polish but also Canadian and hold two citizenships, and also lived in Japan and Portland, so I have decent representation in records from those places. Rock generally has a giant catch-all section where Canadian and US stuff goes (with other stuff in regional sections) but I have considered splitting off a Canada section. I sort of have avantgarde and new age and all electronic stuff living together and might subdivide sometime.
It also helps to think of my own associations with the record. Like the Mongolian stuff. Since I know something like Bayan Mongol was put out on Melodia when Mongolia was communist, in my head it is an Eastern Bloc record and since that is the strongest association, that's where it gets filed.
It's all a bit amorphous, but it works a lot better than if I impose a rigid structure on my collection and fight how my mind works. It works because it takes into account intuition and instinct instead of trying to suppress it.
I go straight A to Z, with small children's and nature sounds sections kept separate. I suppose I could file the frog sound records under F and the bird sound records under B, but it's easier to keep them in the nature section. The problem with larger genre sections for me (which I used to maintain) is that it kept requiring large movement of records to keep the genre sections organized.
But I've got all these Indian records where the artist doesn't mean anything to me that have been a challenge to keep track of and find when i want to hear them. When i was describing this problem to a friend of mine, he advised taking the following approach: "Sorry little brown sitar player, if you aren't memorable enough for me to remember your name, maybe you don't deserve to be found."
Harsh, but possibly true.
A to Z is the least subjective approach.
STOP USING LABELS TO SEPARATE US.
JRoot
Then I split them into broad genres/styles, and if they take up more than one crate/shelf I split them chronologically. Doing the chronological split generally does the job of differentiating the various sounds that exist within genres.
For 12s
Disco/Boogie 70-79/80-82/83-87/Newer/edits-remixes-compilations
Hip Hop 79-85/85-95/96-now
Broken Beats/Nu Jazz
Party Jams/Breaks/B???more
House/Nu Disco
New wave/rock/80s/Pop
For LPs
Funk/Disco/Boogie/Soul 60-70/70-80/80-90/Compilations & new
Favourites ??? Artists who I have a big portion of their back catalogue ??? Roy Ayers, Minnie Ripperton, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan etc.
Hip Hop/Beats 79-89/90-Now
New Wave/Rock/80s
House/Dance/Nu Disco
60s-70s Rock
Before I had a store I was straight A-Z.
When I opened I did soul, jazz, rock, folk a-z and separate sections for ethnic and maybe blues and some other stuff.
People hated it. Jazz guys refused to look for records in bins that had offensive artist like Michael Jackson and Teddy Pendergras. Nobody else liked it much either. Customers want labels.
- spidey
Was this an attempt at humor?