Talk:Style/Titles/Part numbers

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I have releases where the first part of the track series has no part number, despite a second part existing. In this case I think we should leave that numberless, as it could be considered the 'original' or 'main' version of the song. --Gecks



Q: What if a track "Some Trackname (Pt. 1)" is featured with the said title on a compilation? Should it stick to the formatting as it were in sequence with the other parts of the series, e.g. "Some Trackname, Part 1"? I'm in favor of applying PartNumberStyle to all track names which have some notation of Pt, Pts and other variants. --Keschte

A: I believe that's the thing to do - I think tracks that intentionally have these abbreviations (for whatever reason) are a rare occurrence. --Gecks



Q: Should stuff not be added to TrackTitles in parentheses, like in TrackAttributesStyle and RemixStyle?

A: As long as it is consistent, use the format the artist uses. Parts are almost always shown with a preceding comma on tracklistings, rather than track attributes (e.g. mix names). Also, we consider PartNumbers to be more a part of the title than ExtraTitleInformation, they are special.



Yet another question :) What about tracks which combine different parts where every part has a name? See for example Angra's Rebirth and its entry in Discogs (they do this in comments). Often we seem to leave those parts out as they make the title to long and the part names are often not mentioned on the cover but only in the lyrics. But on this cover for example there are part names (not with the word "Part"). Discogs does this as before, in our release entry it is not mentioned at the moment. I really think we need to adopt more style guidelines from the classical guide. --Shepard

  • I don't think this guideline should cover this really. This is just for dealing with part numbers of separate tracks. For that example I would like to see it as something like "Unholy Wars: Imperial Crown / Forgiven Return". I seem to remember that being suggested back in the StyleDude days but there doesn't seem to be anything concrete in place. Anyway it's for another page :) --Gecks

Sentence "Applies to songs that have been split across multiple tracks." should go, because it contradicts the rest of the document. Opinions? --Zout

  • For it. Or at least reformulate it. --Shepard
    • Agreed, and done. --Gecks
      • But I still disagree :( Again: the last track on http://musicbrainz.org/showalbum.html?albumid=185132 only has those 3 parts so there are no other tracks that belong to this series. Also it does not say that this track can contain several parts of the series. I'd say: "If a track covers one (or several) part(s) of a work which is splitted to several parts ..." or something like that. --Shepard
        • I think with that, the title *implies* there's more parts to the series, regardless of whether they have ever been recorded or not. If not, then it's just a stylistic title and as such doesn't really come under this rule I think. Regardless, I think this is an exceptional case and I'd rather we didn't compromise the integrity of the rule that applies to 99% of cases. We can't cover every eventuality really. --Gecks
          • A stylistic title would not come under the rule? So I should write it like it's on the cover? That would be very inconsistent. Another example: http://musicbrainz.org/album/94d1641f-7c5a-4e11-acaa-2654f57986a4.html - see: it's not an exceptional case. And not an eventuality. --Shepard
            • If you can think of a way to incorporate this into the guideline without confusing things then be my guest. Personally, I can't, and I'd like to go with a simple (hah!) set of rules to cover most things, and let common sense prevail over the rest. --Gecks

What about when separate parts are labelled not as numbers, but as letters on the sleeve? Do we use "Part X", "X)", or "part x", or some variant? "Daydream Nation" --ArtySmokes

  • As per SeriesNumberStyle, any alternative numbering scheme is fine. Please DeleteWhenCooked --Gecks
    • Any recommendation on the case of the lettering? I believe it to be lower-case on the Sonic Youth sleeve. --ArtySmokes
      • it's uppercase on mine so i guess it should stay like that unless there's an inconsistancy, in which case i'd probably favour lowercase as it's more 'standard'. --Gecks

Spacing ranges

I've spaced out "1-3" into "1 - 3" in the single example using a range. This works, sortof, for parts using arabic numbering. However, it breaks on just about anything else:

However, this breaks on anything but that one numbering scheme, or at least, makes the result more comfusing to read / invalid grammar syntax:

Train to Lamy Suite, Parts One-Two
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts I-II
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts A1-A2
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts I-1-I-2
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts A1a-A1b, A1c
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts I,II-III
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts Twenty-One-Twenty-Two
etc

Contrast that with:

Train to Lamy Suite, Parts One - Two
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts I - II
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts A1 - A2
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts I-1 - I-2
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts A1a - A1b, A1c
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts I , II - III
Train to Lamy Suite, Parts Twenty-One - Twenty-Two

Especially in cases 4, 6, and 7 above, it makes the output more comprehensible. In cases 1 and 7, it makes the grammar valid. In case 2, it makes the Roman numeral range valid. Additionally, we already space & - we use "1 & 2", not "1&2". Why should ranges be any different? - @SIG

It is the only correct way to do normal numbering - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash. I can see an argument that it breaks "I-1 - I-2", but not for non-arabic numbers in genera? And in any case, why make it wrong/unintuitive for arabic numbers (used in 99% of cases) just to protect these edge-cases?
I also don't think the new examples table is necessary as examples are given in the section above. I don't think anyone really has any trouble with how to use this style! --Gecks 23:30, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm reverting these changes as I feel strongly that the "-" shouldn't be used in this way. I think if you want to do these changes an RFC is required. The example table also still doesn't seem necessary to me. --Gecks 23:44, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
+1 for the example table not necessary. Murdos 01:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
I've reverted the revert. The style itself doesn't specify that there should be no space around -; only the example gave this impression. However, A) the no-space-around-hyphen style actively *breaks* on anything *but* 0-9 ranges, whereas the spaced version does not, and B) the new GC was written to insert that space. We could keep switching this back and forth, but if the sense is that there explictly should be no space, this really should be decided by RFC, with reason given as to why the fact that this causes misinterpretations (Part 1-1, 1-3, Twenty-two, etc all would appear as ranges, not singular part numbers; spaced ranges doesn't introduce that problem.) BrianSchweitzer 05:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
Please provide some real-life examples of all these strange case. --zout 06:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Non-English capitalization

What about capitalization? Is it supposed to capitalize "part"-word in any language? In Russian, for example, common name for part is часть and only a first word of sentence is capitalized. Which alternative will be correct, "Название, часть 1" or "Название, Часть 1"? --fedyakov 09:14, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

No part numbers used in tracklist

I've into a few situations where songs are split across multiple tracks. What should we do in those cases? Actually, some of those are different in context enough that I think they shouldn't be handled the same way all the time. Some examples I've run across:

  • Songs that are spread across tracks and have fairly clear musical division, but don't indicate a part number. (e.g. "Green Typewriters" has 10 clear sections, but the CD only lists the song once, using a brace to indicate that it spans tracks 12-21.)
  • Songs that were split across album sides or discs that don't use a numbering system to indicate the order of tracks. (e.g. In C spanned two sides of an LP, using the same name on each side and indicating side number elsewhere on the label; Part 5 of the 1996 issue of Music in Twelve Parts was somewhat brutally hacked into beginning and conclusion to fit the piece on three discs; "Play in the Rain" from Go Insane originally spanned the album flip, indicating 'continued', although when the 'continued' part was used on the B-side of the "Go Insane" 7", it didn't say 'part 2' or 'continued'.)
  • Single, undivided songs that arbitrarily span multiple tracks as kind of a gimmick, with no audible break or identifiable musical separation, and without indicating multiple parts on the tracklist. (e.g. Each track on The Maggot is split equally across two tracks; Very Sleepy Rivers spans 72 4-second tracks; The track divisions on this John Cage tribute were generated - of course - randomly.)

I'm not sure what approach is best for situations like this. I guess if a non-numerical indication is given, we should use it, but should it be capitalized like part of the title, or lowercase like extra title information? The tracklist for The Maggot is particularly annoying, where "Part #" has been added to every track even though there's nothing like that on the release. It really doesn't seem right to artificially add a numbering system to something that never used them and has no musical divisions. Series Number Style seems to say all it's purpose is is to specify how to format series/volume/part text that's already present. It'd be great if the guidelines said if, when, and how we should add numbers. Torc 11:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)