Sunday 11 October 2020

A possible new stage for the blog

Ever since I set this blog up, there's been a problem: how to update the initial information as new recordings come out. New recordings are not really a frequent thing, but the problem has gradually been growing. Also, streaming has greatly changed the availability of some old recordings, so for example information that says something was only ever available on LP is sometimes not correct.

For these reasons, I was always aware that a blog was not the ideal format. It's useful for writing a post with news, but not for being the ongoing record of data.

To put it another way, I always knew a database would be a better option. But I have always had very little idea about databases. I've tried creating one once or twice and quickly given up, not really knowing what I'm doing.

Well for the first time, I'm genuinely getting somewhere. I've just discovered Airtable. And I can honestly say that after just a couple of hours, I've got further with building a database of Holmboe recordings than I've ever got before. By a long way.

I might well come unstuck when I try to work out how to then turn that database into something to display to you all. My hope is to make it possible to either (1) select a work and see the albums it's available on, or (2) select an album and see what's on it. Achieving that goal might be some way off, but with Airtable I've been able to construct records for 7 BIS label albums and their contents in the space of only an hour or so.

I also know there's an album release that should be coming in a few months, but I'll save that for later.