Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Thesaurusing Area Music Loops

I'm still doing the whole thesaurus bit. On Monday I added the 3,000th Imagineer. I'm closing in on 50,000 terms total. (You can always check the sidebar for a reasonably up-to-date view of thesaurus statistics.) There are some aspects of Disneyland that I have procrastinated on thoroughly investigating, because they require the creation of so many new terms and linkages. If you recall my post Thesaurusing Live Entertainment, you'll know that I strongly desire new terms to be well-linked. Tonight I spent a little time adding terms in a similar vein: area music loops.

The area music loops themselves aren't too knotty a problem; conceptually, they're narrower terms of media -> media by types -> audio material -> audio material by contexts -> Resort audio material -> background music. But, I wanted each individual song to be linked to the area music term (e.g., Space Mountain Concourse area music). I settled on first creating an umbrella term for each song (e.g., Tomorrowland 2055 Fanfare (song), Miracles from Molecules (song), Monorail Song (song), etc.).

When known, I have linked the song creators to these broader terms. I then created a new term for each of these songs, linked to the music loop. I did this because these songs are just manifestations of the broader song concept. For example, there could be sheet music released for a song; it could have been recorded for a film soundtrack and rerecorded for the Park; or a song could have several Park versions. It seemed useful to me to make these distinctions, to record information about these separate instances. It also leaves open the possibility of future indexing of these individual audio tracks.

To demonstrate what I mean, below is the term record for Space Mountain Concourse area music, the mixture of music from the EPCOT Center entrance loop and new recordings of Tomorrowland's greatest hits, produced by Bruce Gordon for the never-was Tomorrowland 2055:
DLRERA: 1990s 1990s
DLRERA: 2000s 2000s
ETY: AME Area Music
LOC: DL-TL Tomorrowland
OPSTA: CUR Current

DFJHS: 0:00 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Fanfare" (0:48)
0:49 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Theme & Fanfare" (1:38)
2:27 - "Energy" (3:23)
5:50 - "Timekeeper" (2:07)
7:57 - "Golden Dream" (3:45)
11:42 - "Miracles from Molecules" (1:43)
13:25 - "It's Fun to Be Free" (3:29)
16:54 - "Monorail Song" (2:58)
19:52 - "Let's Listen to the Land" (4:30)
24:22 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #1" (0:19)
24:41 - "Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #2" (1:44)
26:25 - "One Little Spark" (3:24)
29:49 - "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (2:24)
32:13 - "Nemo's Theme" (0:40)
32:53 - "Go Go Goodyear" (1:46)
34:39 - "Magic Journeys" (5:35)
40:14 - "Pop Goes the Weasel" (0:08)
40:22 - "We Are Here to Change the World" (3:13)
43:35 - "Universe of Energy" (3:54)
47:29 - "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" (2:25)

BT: background music
BTP: Space Mountain Concourse
BTP: Space Mountain Guest rest rooms [editor's note: yes, it plays here, too!]
CTBF: Gordon, Bruce
NTP {01}: Tomorrowland 2055 Fanfare (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {02}: Tomorrowland 2055 Theme & Fanfare (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {03}: Energy (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {04}: Timekeeper (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {05}: Golden Dream (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {06}: Miracles from Molecules (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {07}: It's Fun to Be Free (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {08}: Monorail Song (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {09}: Let's Listen to the Land (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {10}: Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #1 (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {11}: Tomorrowland 2055 Theme #2 (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {12}: One Little Spark (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {13}: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {14}: Nemo's Theme (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {15}: Go Go Goodyear (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {16}: Magic Journeys (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {17}: Pop Goes the Weasel (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {18}: We Are Here to Change the World (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {19}: Universe of Energy (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
NTP {20}: There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
The information at the top (DLRERA/Disneyland Resort Era, ETY/Entity, LOC/Location, OPSTA/Operational Status) are various classifications that I apply to most of the terms in the thesaurus. I have various definitional note fields, preceded by DF. DFJHS is one I use when I have come up with the information myself or if I just want to make notes about a term. BT/BTP are ways of linking to broader terms, NTP narrower terms. CTBF stands for "contribution from." The numbers in the curly brackets are node labels, so the songs are ordered as they play in the loop. Now let's take a look at one of the Space Mountain Concourse songs, Miracles from Molecues (Space Mountain Concourse) (song):
DLRERA: 1990s 1990s
DLRERA: 2000s 2000s

BT: media by names
BTI: Miracles from Molecules (song)
BTP: Space Mountain Concourse area music
And this is what the main term for the song (Miracles from Molecules (song)) currently looks like:
SRC: Disneyland: The Nickel Tour (2000)
The Disneyland Encyclopedia (2008)
Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends (2008)

BT: media by names
BTI: songs
NTI: Miracles from Molecules (Space Mountain Concourse) (song)
CTBF: Sherman Brothers
RT: Adventure Thru Inner Space
SRC is used to show where this exact term came from. In this case, I have not yet come across any variant names for the songs. The Sherman Brothers are shown as contributing to the writing of the song (obviously, they wrote it, but I do not currently have a finer grained relationship to use). Right now, Adventure Thru Inner Space is shown as a related term for the song. In the future, when I've created terms for each instance of Miracles from Molecules in the attraction's soundtrack, I may delete this more explicit reference. (The song would be related through the song instance which would be related to Adventure Thru Inner Space.)

At any rate, you can see why I have put this off for so long! So far, I have only added the Space Mountain Concourse area music and Main Street area music (1992- ), but more will follow.

5 comments:

outsidetheberm said...

Impressive. Your mission boggles the mind. Have you a time frame - or desired year - for delivering a finished product?

Jason Schultz said...

Obviously, I could say that it will never be finished, because I can go into infinitely greater levels of detail. Realistically, there are certain sources I want to use completely before I'd consider the thesaurus to be in a more stable state. (I've added 12,000 terms since February!) I'd like to go through all the Disneyland Lines (currently I've done about 10%), Disney News/Disney Magazine (<5%), Disneyland Holiday/Vacationland (~5%), Backstage Disneyland, Disneylander, most important of the books (Disneyland: The Nickel Tour, Walt Disney Imagineering, Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends, Disneyland: Inside Story, Window on Main Street and the like), souvenir wall maps, and some other sources like a representative sample of telephone directories and guidemaps. I don't know when that will be finished, but as I am still collecting many of these sources, I would think it's at least five years off. (I'm a one-man band of identifying sources, gathering them (and for the Lines, scanning), and exhaustively examining each.)

The question of a finished product is a bit different, because I'm not exactly sure what that would look like! The original intent was for this to be a background resource for creating the Disneyland Compendium (as outlined in my inaugural post), but it's quite more sophisticated than that, now. It would be a waste to pare it down for a printed display, but I'm not sure how electronic access would work (including the logistics of putting it in a form for public access!).

Perhaps on my next trip to California I can give you an in-person demonstration--much better than talking about it!

outsidetheberm said...

I'll look forward to it. Thanks.

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

You’re a "one-man band" playing a symphony! Outsidetheberm: I saw the "database" in person last year, my mind still struggles with its complexity, it really is a work of art in progress. Jason, how about a mini presentation for us blogger and Disneyland geeks???? We'll buy you lunch!

Major Pepperidge said...

Gee, I had all that information already nicely arranged, if I had known you needed it I would have passed it along! ;-)

Yes, we bloggers will buy you a Happy Meal and you can even have an ice cream cone if you are good!