Using Aeon Timeline for Popular Music

[Keith]

I have always had an interest in music and am trying to utilise Aeon Timeline to document and research music and how my interest in specific genres and artists has developed over time and as a general music research tool.

This is a use case I have not seen used, though I suppose it could fit into any historical research paradigm.

While I have used the tool some time ago I am really only now digging deep into how I can best use its functionality to structure my content, before entering too much data.

The kind of data I intend to capture would be as follows:

Events - I envisage different event types for Concerts, Artists discovered, key songs, releases and possibly key events such as the formation of some key bands etc.

Data types - Person, artist, venue, location etc

Relationships - Used to map things like Artist to Concert, Concert to Venue, Venue to Location etc

There are a couple of things I am struggling with. The main one being how to structure the artist/band. The way I am thinking of it (probably overly complicated) is that I have a band / artist, this artist has a lineup (since members are constantly changing), a lineup has members and so on.

I had thought of using the ability to assign a parent but this doesn’t seem possible in my situation (at least not in all cases) since a band member could exist in multiple lineups of the same band. Therefore I guess all I can do is allocate a relationship to each.

I would also like to document some key periods such as the Punk era, New Wave of British Heavy Metal etc. I’m unclear whether these could be best utilised as Calendar Markers (OK, but there is no label shown when including them on the Timeline and there appears no way to filter them). I could use a custom event type I guess or even wondered if these would be better suited to a story arc.

I know that this is super niche but would appreciate any input or suggestions anyone can offer. And if there are any users interested in the topic or possible a more general research based topic it would be great to see what your doing.

[stuart]

I use Aeon to track gigs that i have been to. Is a good way to visualise when and where these things have happened.

For each gig I record:

• who I was with
• where it was (venue name linked to geographical location)
• who headlined
• who supported
• related album release
• and various other details

Have stripped things back into a demo file but i don’t seem to be able to attach it here. In lieu of that here are some screenshots from it…

Concert details (selected) | Album releases also shown in timeline

Band details (by clicking on Band name in inspector)

Band member details (by clicking on Artist name)

Can pass on the file if anyone is interested.

[Keith]

Wow! I really didn’t expect to find someone else with an interest in capturing the same kind of data.

I think what you have captured is very similar though you have broken things out into more detail which I intend to circle back on. For now, I just wanted to get concerts added where I still have ticket stubs.

I’m still fleshing things out, so I’m in a state of flux at the moment (and probably always will be )

I like the idea of adding the album release for the tour etc. I’m also looking at linking out to concert archives.org and/or setlists.fm

I’m in the process of researching other concerts I have attended but do not have tickets stubs for.

I would certainly like to get a hold of your demo file and am happy to provide mine also if interested.

Here’s a screenshot showing the kind of thing I have right now.

It shows the kind of concert information you have. I’m also experimenting with band timelines, lineups etc.

My main concern is the volume of data and how practical it is to put too much data into this. I guess it’s a case of how far to go with this as a data repository rather than linking out to other tools like Obsidian etc.

I am also testing out images, and wondering wither to add images or just links. It’s kind of nice to see images for the concerts but again, not sure how practical this approach is.

[SCN (Steve)]

Hey Keith. I’m a composer so really enjoyed reading about your project.

I’m a fan of Aeon Timeline but if I were going to do a project like yours, I would use a more flexible tool, Obsidian.

You could, for example, create a note called “Band X.” You could then type up anything you want about the band, including, of course, its members. As you type a member’s name, you throw some brackets around it and voila, a new note on that member is created. You write up whatever you want about that member, maybe drag in some pictures, and mention other bands s/he was in. As you type the name of another band, you throw some brackets around it and voila, a new note is created about that other band. And so on. It’s incredibly intuitive and organic.

Then the fun starts. In any given note, you can see which notes link to it (called backlinks). You can navigate around that way.

You can use a plugin called Dataview to create custom tables. For example, you could have a table of “Bands,” which could show the members of each band. Or a table of “Bandmembers,” showing all bandmembers and listing, for each, the bands they were in (and their dates). Or a table of “Vocalists,” of “Bass players,” or whatever. You can quickly sort these tables by any column heading, including dates.

The downside is that, though Obsidian has some timeline plugins, they are terrible. If a timeline is important, Aeon Timeline is your best option, IMHO.

Just brainstorming with you…

Steve

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Update: I didn’t read beyond the first posting before I dived in. Keith, you obviously are already aware of Obsidian, as you mentioned it in a follow-on post. I still think it might be a good fit for your project.

[stuart]

@SCN

As you type a member’s name, you throw some brackets around it and voila, a new note on that member is created. You write up whatever you want about that member, maybe drag in some pictures, and mention other bands s/he was in. As you type the name of another band, you throw some brackets around it and voila, a new note is created about that other band. And so on. It’s incredibly intuitive and organic.

All of this is doable in Aeon too (if/once it has been set up appropriately). Unlimited metadata fields can be added for any item to capture any data type that is desired.

@SCN

Then the fun starts. In any given note, you can see which notes link to it (called backlinks). You can navigate around that way.

The relationships inspector effectively does this in Aeon - see the screenshots i posted above. All the entries in that right-hand panel are clickable and take you to the relevant details.

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Obsidian is definitely a good option for certain approaches but the things you have highlighted aren’t particular strengths in relation to Aeon (in my opinion).

[Keith]

Hi Steve,

Many thanks for the suggestion, as you’ve discovered already I am familiar with Obsidian and it is a great tool, with the ability to create the backlinks as you suggest. In this instance though, the ability to have the timeline functionality is critical to how I want to see the information. I agree that AT may not be the right place for longer form content, but even then I am uncertain at this point whether Obsidian is the best approach vs say Scrivener (which I am a little less familiar with at this point, despite purchase a copy very early on).

I am getting some great use from Aeon Timeline and finding its ability to filter is even providing me with some basic analytical data i.e how many concerts I have been to for a particular band etc. However, I would like to see more analytics incorporated into Aeon Timeline (perhaps I ned to add this to the feature requests).

[SCN (Steve)]

You make a good point – you can do each of these things in Aeon, mostly, as long as you set it up first.

[SCN (Steve)]

No argument there, Keith. If a timeline is important, then Aeon rules supreme.

Weirdly, for my novel writing, I find I don’t need a graphical timeline. I just create an Obsidian Dataview page of, say, my scenes, which I can sort by date. I actually prefer it to a timeline because I can see a great deal more information relative to a given date than I can with any graphical timeline.

Anyway, I just wanted to toss that idea out there. Heck, I’ll probably change my mind six months from now, anyway.

[Keith]

Appreciate the suggestion. The beauty of having such a good selection of tools is that we can all choose an option that fits us individually. I’m definitely more of a visual person so the timeline suites me better than a table (though I do use the spreadsheet view a lot too).

I think we’re all guilty of changing our tools and processes far too often, rather than focusing on the end goal. I know I am