Karaoke Forums

This is the way I learned either in school or from my mom
Williams, Hank Jr.
Davis, Sammy Jr.

As for the bands... rather than all the commas in
Brown, Zac, Band
I prefer
Zac Brown Band, The
I think the second way because it's the name of a band, and even though the band is named after a person... it's still a band name, not an individual.

I guess if Zac Brown were to come out with music under just his name... I'd probably put it in the book as Zac Brown, right next to Zac Brown Band, The!

This is why I wish I'd just stayed with my old way and did everything by first name. Especially since I didn't have to figure out if it was a real persons name or a group name.. my people got used to the first names first. Then I had to go change it on them!! And too much work to change it back now

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

I do it mainly for uniformity.

By using Music Book Deluxe's "Karaoke File Renamer" or KFR utility, I am attempting to eliminate typos that result in multiple listings in the book.

It really is a moot point when your singers are using a digital list or kiosk because they can search for it without considering the format at all.

It makes me laugh when they ask me if I don't have any of a certain artist when they are searching in the title field though.

_________________
Never the same show twice!

Shoot! That happens with the books too! Alcohol gives courage, AND kills brain cells!

Well, finished my new book... no typo's, and no dup's BUT, I still have sc8869 on the way.. won't be here for another week or so. I want to print my books and get SC on the line for my audit!! Almost there!

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

Am I the only person here that's still using first name then surname?

Of the previous examples, mine would show

Hank Williams
Hank Williams Jr.
Hank Williams III

Zac Brown Band, The

Ricky Van Shelton

Where I have problems (and often find duplicates) are with things like:

ACDC or AC-DC or AC/DC or AC DC or how about

T.Rex or T-Rex or T Rex

CCR or C.C.R. or Creedence Clearwater Revival

Then there's the always confusing Freddie Fender or Freddy Fender...

And don't get me started on Bon Jovi or Jon Bon Jovi

Sigh!

_________________
Earl
(BS, PHD & Certified CurmuDJeon)

[font=Times New Roman]"Growing Old may be mandatory... but growing UP is still optional."[/font]

Not a problem with Last, First. Of course I am sure you can come up with counter-examples (Elvis and Elvis Presley?)

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

John Cougar
John Cougar Mellencamp
John Mellencamp

You have to pick a name or they get scattered or repeated in the book.

_________________
KNOW THYSELF

I regret changing from first name first, last name last. Am sick to death of comma's! At least the first name first only required a comma when there was a 'The' involved.. and if ya wanted to be really lazy... could just leave the THE in the front!!!

John Mellencamp doesn't want the "cougar' in there anymore.. never really did want it.. his label/manager/whoever, thought that Mellencamp would be too hard for people to remember so they gave him Cougar.. .John Cougar. As soon as he/they felt he was well-known enough he added his last name, then later still dropped the 'Cougar' all together.. He hated that name. So, I, being the sweet person that I am, took 'Cougar' out of my books!!

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

I use:
Connick, Harry Jr ( No Comma after the first name and no Period at the end of Jr)

If the name of the Band has a Proper Name I use:
Daniels, Charlie (Band)
Miller, Steve (Band)
Geils, J (Band)
Shepherd, Kenny Wayne (Band)
Dixon, Gabe (Band)
Young, Eli (Band)
Matthews, Dave (Band)
Healey, Jeff (Band)
Brown, Zac (Band)
Kihn, Greg (Band)
Mcgee, Pat (Band)
Rogers, Randy (Band)
Rose, David (Band)
Seay, Robbie (Band)
Zager, Michael (Band)
Zelek, Joe (Band)

If the name of the Band has a Proper Name with two parts:
Cafferty, John & The Beaver Brown Band
Fred, John & His Playboy Band
Kc & The Sunshine Band
Randolph, Robert & The Family Band
Shupe, Ryan & The Rubber Band
Wakelin, Johnny & The Kinshasa Band

If I can't tell that the Band has a Proper name:
Gibson Miller Band
Hermes House Band
Marshall Tucker Band
Rossington Collins Band

All the "The" are stripped from the BEGINNING titles and artists.
"The Dance" becomes "DANCE"
"The Beatles" become "BEATLES"

All the "A" are put at the beginning of the Titles and Artists:
Titles:
A Bad Goodbye
A Little Bit Stronger
A Love Bizzare
A Song For You
A Whole New World
A Year Without Rain

Artists:
A Perfect Circle
A Taste Of Honey

I do not use "Feat" (Featuring) in any Artist:
"Feat" becomes "&"

"John Cougar Mellencamp" becomes "Mellencamp, John"
This keeps all listing together.
Any other reason why NOT to use "BOOKS?"
With Digital Books, a mistake can be remedied, immediately, with a few keystrokes and a DATASTICK/JUMP DRIVE to update your Kiosks.

I will be setting up a kiosk as soon as I can. But I know I'll still have to have at least 2 books. For awhile anyway.

Marshall Tucker Band, The ... that way I don't have to use the () hate them while typing... slows me down!!

But yes,

Jett, Joan & The Blackhearts

I leave the "A", but put the "The" at the end .. Beatles, The
If I used just the word "Dance" for The Dance or Dance, The.. I'd have people coming to tell me my mistake!!

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

Since John Cougar now is John Mellencamp, he is listed under Cougar-Mellencamp, John under C for all his songs since many still refer to him as Cougar. He HATED John Cougar BTW.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Earl, you are not alone--I switched to first name first just to avoid all of those decisions on how to do bands with people's names in them. But every now and then someone can't figure that out and complains that the books aren't in any particular order.

I spent a lot of time making corrections, and commonizing names to make it easy to follow. By the way, there is no "The" in front of Zac Brown Band. I personally use "The" when the band uses it. ZBB does not (look at their album covers). I put "The" last. I think it is very confusing to put "The" first. It would be a nightmare trying to find a band in a book that way with most likely thousands of songs in your Artist books starting with "The" (same with with Title listing books).

Then again, I break the rules by just using "John Mellencamp". Tom Petty is another.

Whichever way you list it, you will get some questions. Now if you have a kiosk instead, whichever way they type it (as long as the spelling is correct) the name should show up.

_________________
KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

My wife and I tell each other when looking for a song, "Don't forget to look in the The section!"

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I've always listed mine by first name first and no the's either.


Why most people remember first names of the artists. Never in my life have I ever addressed or introduced someone by their last name first, only Bond, James Bond does this.

With all the, the's that section would be bigger than any other just about. No commas either that way I don't have to remember to type them in when typing in the search field, I almost let out all the apostrophe's (') too but decided to leave them in.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Apostrophe's .... I put them in, but in Karma, all i have to type is ....
'have fun cyndi' and I get 'Girl's Just Wanna Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper'
If I can't remember the spelling of something... just part of a name or title gets me what I'm looking for. So, I could just type 'girl fun c' and I'd still get the song. "Wanna' and "Want To" ... "Goin' or "Going" ..."lovin'" or "loving"... all get to be a pain.
AND.. Rascal Flatts.. I'm not a country fan.. so I didn't know if that was a band or possibly a person!! I hate having to Google stuff when I'm updating my book...
*sigh* Wish I'd never switched to last name first!

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

Uh...there wouldn't be a apostrophe in that....or in apostrophes either, for that matter.

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Apostrophes

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

GEEZ!
My apologizes .. force of habit!!

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

Well, after all this... since I haven't printed my new book yet... am waiting for some discs I ordered. I'm gonna 'comma flip' back to first names first!! Just thinking about all of this made me realize that even if I get my book completely correct, some new artist will come up with some off-the-wall name and I'll have to figure out how to format the name for the book!
I'm just going to make a few rules for myself:
"The" goes at the end.
I will use apostrophes.
Initials will get the ".".
And probably a few others I can't think of right now!!

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!

I have always stripped "The" and "A" from any artist, or title and always use "&" in place of "And." Some artist like to change their names in the middle of their career - Janet Jackson became Janet.... In my songbook she is listed as Jackson, Janet! Stage Names are not reversed, i.e., Cee Lo Green. His real name is Thomas DeCarlo Callaway! Rascal Flatts is a place and not a name; Montgomery Gentry is just that and not Gentry, Montgomery (those are the last names of each artists). Those artists listed with Ft., the featured artist in most instances are just background vocals and I remove the Ft. artist name from the artist field --- if the featured artist has lyrics, I change the field to read &. Another pet peeve is 'N, 'N' and N --- use one, or the other and be consistent! I have saved much space in printing a song book and reduced the size of my songbook by 50 pages or more doing it this way! It's just knowing what a proper name is, or not! Any Artist that has "Band" in the name, the name is not reversed because it is considered an improper name --- Zac Brown Band is just that and not Brown, Zack Band, or (Band) [Band]. KC & The Sunshine Band I list as KC & Sunshine Band.

A nice post above, but you did not mention one common problem: names that include a dash, i.e., Jay-Z. A dash in a name is construed as a field separator and you will find if you do not remove the dash, your data in the search engine will not be in the right place and will shift one data field to the right because of the dash --- i.e., Jay will be in the artist name field and Z will be in the title field! You can just leave a space where the dash is, or use a tilde (~).... Everybody has their own way of doing it, but you have to remember to keep it simple so your singers can find the artists in your song books!

[/quote]I have always stripped "The" and "A" from any artist, or title and always use "&" in place of "And." Some artist like to change their names in the middle of their career - Janet Jackson became Janet.... In my songbook she is listed as Jackson, Janet! Stage Names are not reversed, i.e., Cee Lo Green. His real name is Thomas DeCarlo Callaway! Rascal Flatts is a place and not a name; Montgomery Gentry is just that and not Gentry, Montgomery (those are the last names of each artists). Those artists listed with Ft., the featured artist in most instances are just background vocals and I remove the Ft. artist name from the artist field --- if the featured artist has lyrics, I change the field to read &. Another pet peeve is 'N, 'N' and N --- use one, or the other and be consistent! I have saved much space in printing a song book and reduced the size of my songbook by 50 pages or more doing it this way! It's just knowing what a proper name is, or not! Any Artist that has "Band" in the name, the name is not reversed because it is considered an improper name --- Zac Brown Band is just that and not Brown, Zack Band, or (Band) [Band]. KC & The Sunshine Band I list as KC & Sunshine Band.

A nice post above, but you did not mention one common problem: names that include a dash, i.e., Jay-Z. A dash in a name is construed as a field separator and you will find if you do not remove the dash, your data in the search engine will not be in the right place and will shift one data field to the right because of the dash --- i.e., Jay will be in the artist name field and Z will be in the title field! You can just leave a space where the dash is, or use a tilde (~).... Everybody has their own way of doing it, but you have to remember to keep it simple so your singers can find the artists in your song books![/quote]

That's the thing, I don't want to know that Montgomery and Gentry are their last names. (Though I do know this). I don't want to worry about Jay-Z.. he's gonna be Jay Z because I'm not going to use the dash. And if I used the comma flip tool, it would come out to be Z, Jay. Fooie, I'm stayin' straight!!
It seems to me that before I switched to last names first, I had less people coming up saying they couldn't find something in the book. Whereas before, all I had to tell them is that it's listed first names first. Now I have to ask them.. "what are you looking for?" , type it into my computer and viola'! It's there. I'd rather not spend the time having the conversation in the first place... .and who knows how many people get frustrated with the book and don't come ask. Yes, before anyone says anything, a kiosk would solve the problem!! I can't afford another dime for awhile. Certification comes first!

(BTW, just used the comma flip tool, there are very few corrections to be made.. unlike when I 'flipped' to last names first) this makes me happy

_________________
SoundChoice Certification coming soon!