Creating a searchable database of all my thousands of LP recordings.

Gentle reader,

Since I've retired, I've been doing a lot of cleaning, organizing and fixing things in and around the house. Outside, my wife and I created a dry creek bed to control rain runoff. We've been getting an unprecedented amount of rain and unusually cool weather for the month of May in Virginia, U.S.A., 2017. I wrote about that project here:

Large and small ROCKS collected to make a dry stream to prevent erosion. UPDATE 

It is working very well and being tested daily. Believe me, I am enjoying this mild weather for the end of May in the South!
 

In the past, I have shown the various new shelves and racks I have found to house the (then) ever growing music collection. The very first one, shown below, I made back when I was nineteen in 1975. My then-girlfriend's dad was a very skilled woodworker and he taught me much. I bought white walnut* boards from him and with his training and assistance I built it:

Back then, it was all glued and clamped. But after many decades of moving it, always painstakingly emptying it first, the top began to loosen. I tried to stabilize it with the metal brackets you see above. Then I finally added screws from the top into the walls.

*White Walnut comes from the kind of trees that grow walnuts that we eat. Black walnut is what often people think of as "Walnut" in furniture. Black walnut are inside a very hard husk and inside that are traditional shells. Inside the shells are the "meat". I don't know if black walnuts are edible. Back to the shelf, I finished it with Tung oil and boy was I thirsty when I got done! That's a little joke.

The shelf, which sits to my left as I type this, is 60 inches long, 36 inches tall and 20 inches deep. I chose those measurements to fit the widest (19 inch rack-mount) audio equipment I might buy someday. Plus the bottom shelves would hold ALL my LP records. Obviously as a teen I did not have a lot of money to buy music. But I knew as time went by the collection would grow. I never dreamed to this extent! Vast majority are from thrift stores. Most cost less than one dollar. As far as the Classical, 95% are in excellent to mint condition.

A couple lucky or perhaps, destined thrift store finds over the years netted me the two tall shelves shown below:

The first find was this unfinished (no stain or oil/varnish applied to it) shelf that was obviously hand made by someone to hold LP records. It now sits in the closet of the Listening Room. It is 35 inches wide (wider at the top trim), 72 inches tall and 13 inches deep.

The next one, factory made, was also obviously made to hold a record collection. It is actually two shelves made to be joined to look like one massive shelf. 

It is beautifully finished and from the sides due to clever construction, looks far deeper than it actually is. Measures 45 inches wide (trim at the top is wider) 19 inches deep (actually 15 inches) and 76 inches high. Each of the ten shelves are 21 inches wide. They can hold a large number of LPs.

So, the original wide shelf that I built holds Classic Rock and other Popular music records on the top three shelves. The bottom shelves contain TV and Film music scores. A few are "Music from the Film..." which is often popular or jazz music and not the usually orchestral music that adds to the story of the films or TV episodes. As an example, the Films Forrest Gump and M.I.B. offered TWO different CDs with music from each film. One labeled: SCORE, the other MUSIC FROM. Get it?

The unfinished shelf in the closet holds: Jazz, Big Band music, international music, some Pop artists like Herb Alpert and comedy records. That and some miscellaneous records.

The largest and best finished shelf hold only Classical music. The term "Classical" is a generic term for Western music (NOT Country and Western) written often long ago and performed by solo artist, small groups (chamber music) and medium and large orchestras. It dates back to the Renaissance and "Classical" is still being written today. There is an era called Classical, just as there is one called Romantic. But to most Classical covers the many hundreds of years that this type of music was and is written.

Some time ago, it came to me to list every LP record that I owned. It was a precursor to doing the project in the computer. I hand wrote 88 pages for JUST the LPs! After finishing the list, I decided that I have ENOUGH RECORDS! And have only bought ONE since.

When was the last time you did any actual writing with a pen and real paper? With so much done via computers and "devices" hand writing is a dying art.

So, as I said, I'm starting with the Classical LPs as they are the biggest collection. I am using Word Perfect's program Quattro Pro. Microsoft has Excel as their spreadsheet program.

I've created eleven columns. Left to right they are: RECORD LABEL, COMPOSER, TITLE OF ALBUM OR MUSIC ON IT, ORCHESTRA, CONDUCTOR; PLUS SOLOIST IF THERE WAS ONE, RECORD CONDITION (MINT EXCELLENT, GOOD, FAIR), PRESSING #) YEAR MADE, COUNTRY MADE IN, FORMAT (STEREO, MONO QUADRAPHONIC) and lastly, NOTES. The last one is for things like Promotional, Audiophile pressing, etc.

Short of taking a photograph of my screen with a digital camera, I don't know how to visually show you the program and process.

One of the cool and time saving things about this program is it remembers not only things you typed before, but which conductors worked with certain orchestras and other time savers.

At the time this photo was made, I'd just pulled the first of the "D" albums. At first, I was carrying an many as I could from the listening room to this room. Then I realized for health sake, it made more sense to only bring TEN at a time. That way I was getting up and down and moving much more often. IT is a medical fact that sitting for a long period of time is bad for us. Suggested is for every 20 minutes of sitting 2 minutes of getting up and moving is the best way to go.

I am now up to Mahler which is on the forth shelf. You can see the letter dividers if your screen is big enough. That's 333 rows completed. Now it's time to get up and move, so I'm going to post this.

Thanks for looking! Page views are approaching 98,000 since I began! The most popular post is this one: A "Modern" Dynaco Amp, Onkyo cassette and Amplifiers I have known at 4,233 page views! It truly humbles me! 

Scott