Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection

Subject: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: cnd
Date: 01 Apr 25 - 08:56 AM

I, as many folks on this forum (likely) do, have a rather large collection of musical media. While I've always kept a digital and searchable index of my albums (typing up liner notes, credits, etc), I've been taking this a step further as of late by also transcribing the lyrics and ascribing 3+ "tags" for each song to increase searchability.

This has been an endeavor several years running (albeit, without any progress for several of those), but I've recently started trying to make more consistent progress -- about an album a day, give or take. Of the >1,400 discrete pieces of media indexed in my collection, I've fully transcribed the lyrics to 134 of them so far. Sisyphean sounding, I admit, but it's also been a good way to explore in a new depth some of the recordings I have. Once completed, I plan to go over each song and make a master song index of songs and variants I have. The vast majority take about 30-45 minutes to transcribe, though there's obviously variance in either direction because of singles (5-10 minutes) or longer/more incomprehensible albums (2 hours ++).

I was wondering, has anyone else on here ever done a similar project? How was your experience, and what was the process? Any unexpected surprises or difficulties? Once complete, how did/do you present the data?

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 01 Apr 25 - 09:40 AM

I have had a similar ongoing project like this for about 50 years, but mine is mostly text-based using mainly books and it largely includes traditional song. I still use 5x3 index cards for most of my indexes as I find them quicker to use than modern tech. Steve Roud and I started out doing similar things at about the same time but he converted onto computers quite early on. Whilst this can be easily shared it is also very time-consuming and I can use my separate indexes and my time to carry out individual intensive studies of selected ballads to the extent that Steve contacts me if he needs greater detail and we frequently swap ideas.
My card indexes comprise:
English traditional song, probably about 2,000 songs in multiple variants
Larger index of material related to traditional song including other
    English language collections.
Children's songs and games
Bawdry
Carols
Chanties
Broadsides
European ballads and relation to British
Forces songs in Eng language
17th century and earlier

I have produced some spreadsheets that relate to the first set of records, a Master Titles Index and an Earliest Versions Index.

I mainly use the data for writing histories of individual ballads for presentations, and articles on the Musical Traditions website (Dungbeetle)

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Apr 25 - 12:49 PM

Gee, I thought I was good for transcribing 5-10 songs a week over the last 25 years. I'm grateful for all the work done by cnd, Steve Gardham, and so many others.

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: Nick Dow
Date: 01 Apr 25 - 01:54 PM

If you have any recordings on cassette I can recommend the cassette to Mp3 machine retailing at about £20 on Amazon. Put a memory stick in switch on and off you go. No batteries needed it works on your USB connection. I was able to send Dominic Patten's widow a recording I made in 1976 of Dom in concert this way. I hope this helps.

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 01 Apr 25 - 08:48 PM

NICK - is there a name for this Magical Machine?
And what hardware/software does it need?

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

I have one, narration, recorded over a Christmas carol tape ... using a USPS stamp to cover the "cannot recover record hole" on a tape cassette. The person was over 100 yo and I "stole" a tape from her cassette player because mine was FULL ...and never expected the interview and subject to endure so long

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Apr 25 - 08:53 PM

Ah, that troublesome word "the" creeps into the discussion, as in "... the cassette to Mp3 machine ...". Here on the Canadian version of the Amazon web site, I can see several such devices in the approximately $37 range, which at today's exchange rate is very close to £20.

If Nick Dow would tell us which of these competing options he's found to be satisfactory, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 02 Apr 25 - 01:56 AM

Yes Sorry. I was in a hurry yesterday. It is a Rybozen Cassette Player, Portable USB Cassette to MP3 Converter, Walkman Audio Music Tape to Digital Converter Player with Earphones, Save into USB Drive No PC Required. £25-99 to be precise.
It can be a bit fiddly to get it set up (i.e. the correct light flashing meaning you're recording) but it does the job OK
What attracted me is that you do not need software or even a PC to operate it.
The ex-drummer with the rock band 'The Feud', is a good pal, and has cleaned up the mp3 recordings for me when I send them by WE transfer. He is a full-time recording and processing engineer amongst other things and working worldwide and always looking for work, so if that can be of help as well please PM me and I'll pass on his details.
All the best Nick

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: Nick Dow
Date: 02 Apr 25 - 03:55 AM

Of course it would help to PM me if I had not posted as a guest. Sorry again! (Running around in circles trying to do everything at once just for a change.)

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: cnd
Date: 02 Apr 25 - 07:29 AM

Thanks for the converter recommendation, Nick. When I convert my audio, I plug an RCA-to-mp3 cable from the audio out of my receiver and into my laptop and record via Audacity, but ever since I added a graphic equalizer to the equation, the cassette playback has been finicky -- with one set of equipment, cassettes would have a very faint delayed audio duplication, while with a nicer system a friend generously gifted to me, the output is impossibly quiet. I was going to just move the cables as needed, but I'll check out this piece of equipment.

Thanks for the commendations, Joe! I'd argue that they're next to nothing compared to your decades-long stewardship on the 'Cat.

Steve, I once had an index card system, but it fell by the wayside for various reasons over the years. Since then, I've moved to a digital format; each album has a folder on my laptop with the songs, album art, and a txt file containing details about the album, liner notes, and lyrics, if I've processed them. I've started uploading them to Google Drive to utilize that search function; their search function also handles digital image OCR, which ties into your point on books and print media.

Books are also a portion of my collection that are under-represented. Partly because I'd rather listen to music than read about it (and as such have fewer books), but also because I haven't put as much time digitizing them. Those I have done I made MIDI tunes for and folders and TXT files as well, much like the albums, but it's rather time intensive, especially making the MIDI. I may try to utilize the Google Drive OCR going forward, but am reticent to abandon the MIDI / TXT system entirely.

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: and e
Date: 02 Apr 25 - 04:23 PM

I have 60,000+ mp3s and I annotate and embed information ( ID3 tags )
in the mp3s. This includes album cover thumbnails, acquisition
notes, etc. and the lyrics if I have transcribed it.

I have used the program MP3 HTML Generator to make download links
generating html pages based upon the tags. But this doesn't work
right since going past windows 7. (hey I've been doing this for 20+
years).

Often I have no idea what all I have digitally "collected" over years.
So, as for searching, I upload everything, provide links to each individual
file (previews of mp3s are created by another program) and let google index
everything... including the scanned PDFs, mp3s, etc. Then I google
search the website.

I am sure that there are more elegant solutions with regards to the mp3s
(e.g. I saw a wordpress plugin that makes webpages based upon the mp3s in
a folder). I haven't had time to do much investigation as I've been working 18 to 30
hours overtime each week since Sept. But at least I say hello to Count d'Money

Subject: RE: Discussion: Transcribing Your Collection
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Apr 25 - 05:47 PM

Reading along . . . something I have a lot of to do starting one of these days.