photo credit: Lawrence OP

Sing for Joy

Every Sunday morning the pretentiously titled local classical station–The Classical Station–airs several syndicated programs featuring sacred music. One of those is Sing for Joy, a production of Minnesota’s St. Olaf College. Every week the College Pastor presents choral music selected to coincide with the readings from the revised common lectionary. The result is a beautiful production that is well worth your listen, especially if you come from a non-liturgical tradition such as I. I’ve found that keeping up with the common lectionary vocally enhanced by world-class choirs is a delightful way to connect with the Church universal. Sing for Joy presents that certain bountiful depth of sacred music that is too often forgotten. My only disappointment is that the broadcasts, as far as I can tell, are not available via podcast. There is, however, a vast streaming archive available on their site of current and past episodes. You can listen wherever you are no matter the day of the week. Check it out.

Lectionary at Lunch

I discovered this second gem on iTunesU. Concordia Seminary St. Louis hosts an enviable Lectionary at Lunch group every Wednesday that is led by a professor who reads through the OT and NT lessons in Hebrew and Greek, translates them and discusses particular points of interest. The podcast of the group is available free of charge and is well worth your listen, especially if you’re interested in exegesis, translation and original language study. I can’t tell you how beneficial this is to listen to. Check it out.

Here lies the dust of a poor hell-deserving sinner,
who ventured into eternity trusting wholly
on the merits of Christ for salvation.

In the full belief of the great doctrines he preached while on earth,
he invites his children, and all who read this,
to trust their eternal interest on the same foundation.

Lemuel Haynes,
who died
September 28th, 1833.

Love in death.

Lemuel Who?

I only learned of Lemuel Haynes today while listening to the Reformed Forum’s interview with Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman. Check out the podcast interview (MP3, 48 minutes). Hearing Haynes’ epitaph near the end of the interview brought tears to my eyes. I thought it was good enough to share. What a succinct summation of the gospel and lasting exhortation to Christ! He is believed to have composed this during his last couple of days.

It doesn’t matter if your MP3 is a sermon, a podcast or a song you’ve recorded, it should be tagged with metadata for the following reasons. If you have a podcast, post your sermons online, or freely share your musical productions online, you should tag your MP3 files with metadata. But first, What is metadata?

What is metadata?

Metadata is simply data about data. If an MP3 podcast of an interview you conduct is data, then data about your data would be the date of the recording, the web site hosting the podcast, the interviewer, and the notes concerning the interview’s discussion questions. This is the podcast metadata. The data about the podcast.

This is precisely the kind of information MP3 metadata (called ID3 tags) stores. These tags can easily be added to any MP3 so that the file carries along with it the information you have tagged on it. Another more technical way of saying this is that you add ID3 tags to your MP3. ID3 tags are MP3 metadata.

Why Tag Your MP3s with Metadata

#1 – Because it’s your MP3 and you don’t want people to forget it.

Oftentimes MP3s are disseminated without any sort of metadata, meaning that after the file has been downloaded, it’s difficult to impossible to figure out where the file came from. Personally, if this happens, I just delete the file.

Consider this example: you are reading a blog that posts an MP3 recording of a Socratic Club debate at Southeastern wherein John Piper debates Greg Boyd on the openness of God. The file you download is called 2009-01-29-sebts.mp3. Apart from knowing the date of the recording from the filename, you know no other information concerning this recording (excepting of course what you’ve read on the blog previously). Imagine further that months go by and you come across this file in your download folder, only vaguely remembering anything about it and having  not listened to it yet. It’s near impossible to figure out what this MP3 is if it lacks metadata. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#2 – Because it will send listeners back to your site.

Information tagged onto your MP3 goes with that file wherever it goes. MP3 metadata provides a slot to insert your web site URL. Should a curious listener then open up your file information, the URL will be there staring back at them. Moreover, simply tagging the name of your podcast in the metadata (e.g., “KataDrew’s Amazing Blazing Podcast”) gives just enough information enough for the average user to Google your organization’s name and get back to your site. Without it, the file is likely deleted or your presence is lost. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#3 – Because many MP3 players require it.

My Sansa sorts files on it by the metadata. MP3s without metadata are all lumped together in the folder labeled “Unknown” and usually then only show the filename which is most often doesn’t provide the information an interested listener is looking for. Properly tagged MP3s, on the other hand, display under their respective name as expected. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#4 – Because Last.fm will give you statistics if you do it properly.

Do you know about Last.fm? It collects information on what its users have listened to. For an example, see my last.fm account @ last.fm/user/admaust. Last.fm users can install a small program that runs in the background of one’s computer which sends played song information to its database periodically only if the MP3s are appropriately tagged. This makes sense for how otherwise would last.fm know to which artist and to which of that artists’ songs to accredit that play?

Because of last.fm’s social networking features, its aggregation is free publicity and also takes the pulse of your file with no extra work on your part except the extra seconds it takes to tag your MP3. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#5 – Because a telling filename (however so) isn’t enough.

No matter how helpful you think you’ve made your filename, you can always make the filename less invasive by including the desired information in metadata. Instead of a filename including a podcast’s name, date, subject, episode number and URL (e.g., KataDrewsAmazingBlazingPodcast-2009-01-20-ChristianityInTheNewWorld-Episode202-KataDrew.com.mp3), the filename could simply include  one or two of these and rely on metadata to carry the rest of the desired information.

#6 – Because software uses it to categorize.

Winamp, for example, catalogs downloaded MP3s according to metadata (artist, track name, album name, date, genre, etc.). Without this information the program becomes a lot like many portable MP3 players in being forced to list files lacking metadata all together in an “Unknown” category, proving useless for searches and quick finding. Tagged MP3s are found and listened to with ease. Windows Vista even now reads MP3 metadata.

#7 – Because more than all this, you can tag it as you please with whatever you please.

Seventh and finally, MP3 metadata features all sorts of slots for any sort of information you may want to include. There’s even a “Comments” field where miscellaneous information you wish to add may be included. Tag your MP3s because you can add whatever you like.

How Do I Add or Change Metadata on My MP3s?

I most often use Winamp to add metadata as its my main media player and its interface for adding tags is very straightforward. For example, while the MP3 you wish to tag is playing, right-click in the program and select View file info (or alt+3). A dialogue box then appears wherein you can enter desired information effortlessly. This works extremely well for single files.

To tag multiple files, try a freeware program like Mp3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en). Note: you should never pay for any software that enables tagging or adding metadata. Freeware solutions are readily available. Don’t buy one for this easy task.

If you are exporting your podcast from the freeware recorder Audacity, take the opportunity Audacity gives you during the process to tag your MP3. It’ll take ten seconds maximum.

With no additional software, tags can be added in Vista as mentioned above. Browse to the folder containing the MP3 you wish to tag. Select the file. You should then see the metadata displayed in the bottom portion of the window. Files without tags will look like screenshot below. Adding tags is as easy as clicking on the text Specify and entering the information.

Theology I (Dr. Keathley)

• If you’re attending Southeastern and getting the Southern Baptist discount (1/2 off tuition) and plan on not serving in a Southern Baptist church and giving back to the Cooperative Program (which pays that other half of your tuition) after you graduate, you should go down to the Business Office right now and tell them not to give you the discount and start paying the regular price

New Testament I (Dr. Black)

• I can’t pray unless the Holy Spirit prays, but the Holy Spirit won’t pray unless I pray; prayer is an inter-trinitarian process.
• “Abba” was an intimate word used by a son to a father wherein obedience (not love) is at the core. The essence of “Abba” is “not my will but yours be done.”

Church History I (Dr. Hogg)

• Early on (at the time of Jerome) baptisms were done in the nude. (How symbolic of casting off that which is earthly and being born again!)
• In translating the Bible into Latin (what would later become the Vulgate) Jerome started to translate the Apocrypha, but ceased doing so, considering them uninspired and not Scripture. The apocryphal material was added back into the Vulgate after his death (in a sub-Jerome translation) and continue to be in the canon of the Catholic church today.

Baptist History (Dr. Harper)

• We think of America being founded on religious liberty for all but, at the time of the colonies, one was only aloud freedom of religious expression insofar as one practiced the denomination of that particular colony. Consequently, to practice otherwise was met with persecution.

The Albert Mohler Radio Program

• Tuesday – Dr. Mohler interviews Dr. Patterson (President of Southwestern Seminary) about a new degree program in their college that has caused a lot of media attention and controversy: a degree in the humanities with an emphasis in homemaking. The point of the program is this: there are those women who have both the desire and ability to be a stay-at-home homemaker, or those women who may find themselves on the mission field needing to make clothes and subsist without electricity and running water; this program is to equip those women. The program is open to women only (“as soon as we get a pregnant man walking in, we’ll sign him up”); but requires two years of both Classical Greek and Latin. Dr. Patterson invited any dissenters to come take the program and see if they can pass!

The Way of the Master Radio

• Wednesday – The hosts of the program are on tour in Europe and toured the John Bunyan museum in England (which reminds me that I need to finish Pilgrim’s Progress). This podcast takes the listener right through the museum with the crew.