A discogra...what?

I'm going to build a discographical database. Discographical information pertains to the who, what, where, and when of, in this case, jazz albums. For example, take the (arguably) most famous jazz album of all time, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. The discography entry for this album would be something like the following:

Miles Davis (trumpet) Cannonball Adderley (alto sax) John Coltrane (tenor sax) Wynton Kelly (piano -1,2) Bill Evans (piano -3) Paul Chambers (bass) Jimmy Cobb (drums)

Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York City, NY, March 2, 1959

1. CO62290-3	Freddie Freeloader (false start)	Mosaic MQ9-191
2. CO62290-4	Freddie Freeloader	Columbia CL 1355
3. CO62291-3	So What	-
4. CO62292-5	Blue In Green	-

From the discographical entry, you can see who all the players were and what they played, and you can see it was recorded on March 2nd, 1959, in New York City at Columbia's 30th street studios. You can see that on this date at this location two tunes were recorded - "Freddie Freeloader" and "So What" - and that "Freddie Freeloader" was recorded twice. You can also see that the first recording of "Freddie Freeloader" is available on an album put out by the Mosaic record label, and that that album has the identification number MQ9-191. The second recording of "Freddie Freeloader" is available on an album put out by Columbia, which you could find by looking for CL 1355, and so on.

A veteran user of discographies would also be able to tell by looking at the issue numbers (CL 1355, for example) what kind of physical media the number represents, such as a CD or LP, and he would also be interested in the matrix number (CO62291-3 for "So What"). For an extended discussion of matrix numbers and their importance to the field of discography, see Howard S. Friedman's excellent paper on the subject.

You may have noticed that the discography entry for Kind of Blue only includes two tunes, which would make for a rather short album. What about "Flamenco Sketches," "All Blues," rest of the tunes that made this album so famous? Those were recorded on a different date, at another "session," so they require a separate entry in the discography.

Miles Davis (trumpet) Cannonball Adderley (alto sax) John Coltrane (tenor sax) Bill Evans (piano) Paul Chambers (bass) Jimmy Cobb (drums)

Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York City, NY, March 2, 1959

1. CO62293-1	Flamenco Sketches (alternate take)	Columbia C5X 45000
2.	Miles Davis comments	Mosaic MQ9-191
3. CO62293-6	Flamenco Sketches	Columbia CL 1355
4. CO62294-1	All Blues	-

Now we have another album, Columbia C5X 45000, and another track (the alternate take of Flamenco Sketches) that doesn't appear on the original Kind of Blue. As you can see, none of the albums currently available actually give a complete picture of either of the two sessions that produced Kind of Blue. This is why accurate discographies are so important.

According to the New Grove Music Encyclopedia, discography is

The systematic cataloguing of sound recordings. Data for listings, in which aspects of the physical characteristics, provenance, and contents of sound recordings are described, are acquired from the recordings themselves (with their containers and any accompanying written and iconographic materials), as well as from logbooks, lists, and catalogues compiled by the record producer or manufacturer, journals and other printed materials, and oral sources.

A very basic discography will include:

• Name of leader or group
• Date and place of recording
• Musicians and their instruments
• The titles of the tunes
• Album issue number
• Album recording label

A more complete discography will include, where applicable, matrix numbers, take numbers, and an exhaustive list of albums on which each take appears. Accurate information about recorded performances is essential in jazz, where recordings - rather than scores or sheet music - are the principal sources for study.