Metadata

The metadata of a song is the important basic information about the song’s creation. Below are short definitions of different points that form the metadata of a song. But first, what is a song? For the purpose of this course we will define “song” as the combination of music and lyrics. (Song = music + lyric).

Title

The title is the name of the song.

Artist(s)

The artist is the person or group that performs the song. Artists usually includes a vocalist (singer) and other musicians (musical instrument players).

Composer

The composer is the person or persons responsible for the initial creation of the song. Composing a song requires a lyricist and a musician. The lyricist writes the lyric. A lyric is a type of poem that is relatively short and meant for singing. (That is why our course is called “Poetry in Music”. It could also have been called “Lyrics and Music”.) The musician, in the context of composing, is the person who writes the musical notes for the song. Sometimes the lyricist and musician is the same person; while at other times it might be different people.

Arranger

The arranger is responsible for the structure of the song, and decides when the different instruments will play and so on.

Engineer

The engineer (aka sound engineer, studio engineer, session engineer, recording engineer) controls the electronic recording equipment and “mixes” or “edits” the music electronically.

Producer

The producer is the overall manager/director of the song.

Three other important terms that is also part of the metadata are intro, outro and runtime. The intro (or “open”) is the beginning-section of the song from when the music starts, until the vocalist(s) start singing. The outro (or “close”) is the end-section of the song from when the vocalist(s) stops, until the music stops. There are two types of outros; a cold ending and a fade ending. With a cold ending the music stops suddenly. With a fade ending the music fades out; i.e. the volume decreases until all sound is gone. The runtime is the total length of time of the song and is usually given in minutes and seconds.

The metadata may also include the year the song was produced, and the record label (the name of the music company that produced, manufactured and marketed the song / album), as well as the album (usually the record or CD) on which the song first appeared.

Exercise:

Listen to the song “Wonderwall” by Oasis in the YouTube-video below.


See if you can find the metadata that are missing below. You may need to search on the Internet, or if you have the album, look in the CD-cover.

Title: "Wonderwall"
Artist: Oasis
Album:
Composer:
Arranger:
Engineer:
Producer: Owen Morris
Intro: Acoustic guitar strumming; 22 sec
Outtro: Cold end; ____ sec
Runtime:

When you use the music video above to figure out the length of the Intro, take note that the music only starts at second 17 of the video. The vocals start at second 39 in the video. To work out the length of the Intro you need deduct 17 from 39 That will give you the length in seconds for the Intro. A similar principle applies for working out the Outtro and the Runtime.