betaplane.org » music http://www.betaplane.org Arno C. Hammann, Princeton NJ USA Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:57:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 An OS X Service to batch-rename song titles in iTunes http://www.betaplane.org/itunes-batch-rename/ http://www.betaplane.org/itunes-batch-rename/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:21:50 +0000 Arno Hammann http://www.betaplane.org/?p=437 I’ve always found it annoying that you can’t make pattern-like changes to the titles of a batch of songs, in the spirit of batch renaming files (admittedly, a bit of a science itself). So, I figured, maybe that’s finally a reason to learn how to use Automator, and the time spent on it might come in useful later on if I ever want to create another Automator workflow. Needless to say, I gave up 1, except: Automator does let you just package any AppleScript as a Service (although only since Snow Leopard, I believe), and that’s exactly what I did.

Download here: iTunes batch rename workflow

Install: unzip, double click install.app
Requirements: OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (I believe)
Use: select files in iTunes, go to menu iTunes > Services > iTunes batch rename

When invoked from the Services menu, a dialog box asks for a Perl substitution pattern of the form s/expr1/expr2/ etc, where expr1 is a Perl regular expression to be replaced by expr2. The given expression is applied to all song titles, not the file names.

For example, if your song titles all contain the name of the artist, say

Telephone (Lady Gaga)
Bad Romance (Lady Gaga)2

you can simply strip it by using the pattern s/ \(Lady Gaga\)// . The backslashes just escape the brackets, which are reserved characters in Perl; if you’re not familiar with Perl regular expressions, find a nice tutorial on them via the search engine of your choice.

If I see that people are at all interested and download the workflow, I might start implementing more features (of course you might also just do it yourself…). The first one on my list is to put the songs’ actual filenames in a variable so one can parse them to fill in blank song titles. A semi-natural second follow-up would be the ability to modify the artist field as well. I’m thinking here of files with a filename containing both artist and title, but devoid of metadata.

  1. It seems to me that anything I am interested in doing with Automator can either only or much more quickly be done in AppleScript or other script languages… and that even though I know almost nothing about AppleScript. And btw, I just wanted to try this footnote plugin. ↩
  2. No, I’m not a fan, in fact, I couldn’t care less… ↩
]]> http://www.betaplane.org/itunes-batch-rename/feed/ 7 A chance concert at the Coffee House http://www.betaplane.org/a-chance-concert/ http://www.betaplane.org/a-chance-concert/#comments Thu, 18 May 2006 23:29:11 +0000 Peter Kwan http://www.betaplane.org/wordpress/http:/www.betaplane.org/admin/2006/05/21/a-chance-concert-at-the-coffee-house/ Yesterday after dinner I was walking in the front court of Graduate College for some fresh air, and for some desperate timeout from my last-minute deep-water-cramp-style preparation for the slide set of my research seminar talk — my advisor just changed my flow completely two days ago, added to my plate no fewer than 10 slides, and I have until Thursday (today) to show her I am capable. Did someone tell you grad school is enjoyable? If so, he or she is not your friend. (I am just kidding, I enjoyed it very much now. Highly recommended.)

Back to my after dinner business (and it had nothing to do with the toilet, alright?). As I was wandering in the court, what sounded like heavenly music came streaming from the wide open windows of the coffee house, filling the entire courtyard with the passion in the music, blending just right with the spring breeze.
I will be honest with you: I am a nosy person. So I instinctly dashed towards the coffee house. What I saw was a well-lit scene of friend betrayal. Maestro Herr Hammann was at the piano, Natalia and Pedro in the audience. How could they possibly do this without telling me? You see. First, you don’t expect a nice old chap like Pedro would betray people. Second, it is not like they have to find me or walk upstairs to my room to tell me or anything. There is this technology, invented by electrical engineers, called the cellphone; and Herr Hammann knows my number. At the crime scene his cellphone was sitting right on top of the piano. This was enough for me. I was ready to storm out of the room and sink back to my slides. Perhaps this would give me that extra anger-induced energy to finish the slides in time. I mean come on! There is no excuse.
But really, at the scene, before my anger had any chance of developing into some manly actions, the music had melted it away, and turned it into pure enjoyment. I sat docilely at the back of the room. Herr Hammann played some Chopin, a Brahms, and I think Beethoven Sonata no. 31. On the Beethoven I tried to help the Maestro turn the pages. Jesus, the score is so complicated I could barely follow! But I used to sight-read just this kind of things. (OK. There was another major reason why it was hard to follow. Hammann would know this deep in his heart. Right, Herr? But I won’t comment here) This made me feel a little sad about my lack of practice on the flute. It seems like I can’t play that kind of music any more. What a loss! But this is an aside, and did not really hamper the evening. Then the Maestro played one more finale piece, about which I embarassingly asked,
“What was that piece?”
The Maestro looked extremely puzzled to my question, plus a hint of “Duh?” in his eyes. But with his grace he lightly replied.
“It was Chopin’s Ballade,” without making a fuss out of it.
But you can still read something from what was missing in his answer. It was so obvious to him and Natalia that he did not even mention which Ballade it was! Was it no. 1, or no. 3, or what? I learned my lesson yesterday — at the end of a piece, if you don’t have a clue what was played, smile to the pianist and stop there; don’t even try to applaud for you don’t know when the piece ends. It is fine, you won’t look stupid if you don’t comment or anything; but you are damned if you ask questions like mine, or start clapping as the pianist hits the piano again after a short pause, as required by the composer.
I enjoyed the concert very much. When I was back in my room, I slipped Horowitz’s Ballade (no. 1) into my war-torn CD player. I could not help but realized that Horowitz was not even remotely as good as Herr Hammann. You know, Horowitz never had that touch that Hammann has. He never quite got the buttons right. Hammann is the master of the buttons! I went on to waste the rest of my night in a fantasy. I thought of becoming Herr Hammann’s agent: we quit PhD, go on tour in the most famous concert halls around the world, autograph CDs, posters, napkins, or anything that is shuffled in front of us by the fans, collaborate with great conductors to play the Rach 3 (oops, I can’t name even one conductor now, the really good ones are dead, might be except James Levine), mingle with some Hollywood types, sign up with DG, beat the crap out of the old Pollini in the Grammy Awards in 2008, make a ton of money…… and buy a MacBook.
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