re QUERY: Terminology for computer-supported music

["Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>]

I've asked once or twice here about terminology for a program
I was helping to document.  The program integrates music
with associated data (lyrics, credits, pictures, textual
notes) in either of two ways:

- The music is a commerical audio CD.  The program recognizes
   the audio CD in your drive and automatically presents the
   associated texts and pictures.

- The music is in MP3 format.  You burn it together with
   the associated texts and pictures and software onto a CD--
   perhaps equivalent to several commercial audio CDs-- and
   the CD is self-activating on any Windows system.

I asked what to call the body of music, corresponding
to a single audio CD or several audio CDs or perhaps
including songs that have never been on an audio CD
together (or never been on an audio CD at all).

Then I asked for terms to distinguish the types of
music:  the type that's still on its own original
audio CD but gets supplemented by computerized data,
versus the type that is burned together with its
associated data and software onto a new CD.

I didn't mention what program I was talking about.
It was already available on the web and I didn't
want to advertise.  But after considering the many
wise suggestions from techwr-l and copyediting-l,
I decided that the best option was to go with the
terminology implied by the program name, which
is MusShell.

The author of the program originally considered that
each body of music was a "collection", but I didn't
like that term because many audio CDs are also called
collections.

I convinced him to use the term "shell."  The music
is integrated with its lyrics, credits, notes, and
pictures into a shell.  It is indeed a shell in the
software sense as well, because it adds a screen
interface of its own to the music.

Is the term intuitive?  No, but the program needs
explaining anyway.  We will try to make sure that
no one trips over the term without quickly encountering
an explanation.

The advantage is that we do have a good differentiation
for the two kinds of shell:  if it's all on a CD that
you can hold in your hand, it's a hard shell.  If it's
only a way of recognizing the original audio CD and
calling up the accompanying pictures and data, it's
a soft shell.  Cute, I hope.

Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to answer.


Mark L. Levinson
Herzlia, Israel
nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il



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