WAV Database, Python and GUI Tutorials

My son Christopher is thinking of creating a music database for his personal use supporting some strict requirements that other databases do not fulfil.

That prompted me to jot down some advice and a couple of starting points.

The initial requirements are simple.

Question: I am wondering if I should build my own sample management software since it seems to be quite difficult to find anything useful...

My wishes:

Build a database of sounds and tags, categories, comments etc. for WAV files
Manage several collections (SoundEffects, Fieldrecordings, Music, Interviews)
Search filenames, tags etc. in certain collection or across all collections
Copy file from original location to other location
Export database to file (text?)

One more (advanced) feature would be:

Read embedded Metadata, e.g. INFO and BEXT Chunks in the wave files head

Appendix B in the guidelines on Embedding Metadata in Digital Audio Files might be interesting.

But I still have to figure out how this actually looks in the file itself.

I tested writing some info into a wave file and it shows up somwhere at the beginning (looking at it in notepad++).

Answer: This should not be too hard.

I love the NoSQL concept and have some small experience using CouchDB.

That would easily do everything you need, and on a web server, as well.

Mediainfo on my mac reads metadata from a WAV file, for instance the title in this case:

/downloads/mh/sailor/ $ mediainfo *wav
General
Complete name                            : 3-26 Sailor With the Navy Blue Eyes.wav
Format                                   : Wave
File size                                : 27.1 MiB
Duration                                 : 2mn 40s
Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
Overall bit rate                         : 1 411 Kbps
Track name                               : Sailor With the Navy Blue Eyes

Audio
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings, Endianness              : Little
Format settings, Sign                    : Signed
Codec ID                                 : 1
Duration                                 : 2mn 40s
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 1 411.2 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Stream size                              : 27.1 MiB (100%)

/downloads/mh/sailor/ $ mediainfo --Version
MediaInfo Command line,
MediaInfoLib - v0.7.62

I use mutagen for all my music file analysis needs.

Response: Mutagen only supports id3 tags, which are not supported in WAV. The Python chunk library might be the answer.

I have to look into analysing wave chunks some more...

Here is what mediainfo tells me about my file:

Allgemein
Complete name                            : F:\Library\_TestFiles\2014_03_20_Nora-Tammik\ZOOM0001\ZOOM0001_LR.WAV
Format                                   : Wave
File size                                : 20,6 MiB
Duration                                 : 1min 15s
Overall bit rate mode                    : konstant
Overall bit rate                         : 2 309 Kbps
Producer                                 : ZOOM Handy Recorder H6
Description                              : sPROJECT= / sSCENE=1 / sTAKE=1 / sNOTE=nora tammik, first visit, 3 weeks old, moan, press, fart,
Encoded date                             : 2014-04-20 14:08:39
Encoding settings                        : A=PCM,F=48000,W=24,M=stereo,T=ZOOM Handy Recorder H6 MS S: +1

Audio
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings, Endianness              : Little
Codec ID                                 : 1
Duration                                 : 1min 15s
Bit rate mode                            : konstant
Bit rate                                 : 2 304 Kbps
Channel(s)                               : 2 Kanäle
Sampling rate                            : 48,0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Stream size                              : 20,6 MiB (100%)

The interesting aspects are:

I don't have to analyse anything.
It tells me everything I want to know.
The description contains data I entered in a program that edits the wave info chunks I want to read out.
The file also tells me the length, size, sampling rate, bit depth, file size, path and filename.

How should I start going about this?

I guess I need to build a GUI, have a database and use some libraries handling the file readout and playback?

I'm not quite sure where to start.

The only things I have written so far are small command line tools and calculators.

But I would like to do some GUI.

Answer: Yes, the chunk library looks perfect.

I would start by working through a quick Python tutorial, followed by one of the GUI packages tutorial. Tkinter is the most global one, supported on all platforms, built into Python: