Which is the program I should work with? Is my main question.

I'm on LinuxMint and have LibreOffice's Calc and Base (similar to Excel and Access).
I play music and have some 2000 titles ot tunes in a spreadsheet, together with "which KEY they're in, which PLAYALONG-CD I have, COMPOSER, which BAND(s) do I play them with" and so on; some 25 columns.
I'm familiar with basic filtering in spreadsheets, but wonder how sophisticated can I get with searches or queries?

If want to do things like:
 "look up all TITLES in the KEY OF of C-minor PLAYED BY band-X and for which there exists a PLAYALONG plus SHEETMUSIC"

Should I somehow EXPORT the spreadsheet to Base?
Or simply stick to Calc (will TurningTables be a solution, for instance?)
Have you EVER used AutoFilter? (In libreoffice I think it's Data -> Filter -> AutoFilter, something similar at least). It sounds exactly like what you're looking for there.

A DATABASE would be useful to you if you need to create multiple different views (queries) of your data, track composers or bands in separate tables and do lookups on that information, or if you need to generate and save reports for later use. Quote from: TechnoGeek on December 07, 2012, 08:22:21 AM

Have you ever used AutoFilter? (In libreoffice I think it's Data -> Filter -> AutoFilter, something similar at least). It sounds exactly like what you're looking for there.

A database would be useful to you if you need to create multiple different views (queries) of your data, track composers or bands in separate tables and do lookups on that information, or if you need to generate and save reports for later use.

Thanks. Saving for later use is definitely a plus, so database it'll be. Looks like quite a learning curve ahead of me 

If only excel had a 'save filter as new view' button

See Here...

I've also seen books at the local Library but i don't have a listing...

I looked at that address before; there's books on all LibreOffice things except for Base...
I also heard rumour they don't even have a developper for Base, at present.

Finding it at the local library seems unlikely, as a web search didn't show any existing books on Base.
Maybe I should consider switching to OpenOffice - in fact, I'll search right now whether they have better documentation on their version of DB-software (I don't know what one would call programs like Access, Base etc)

There are tons of Base resources out there ...including the OO and Libre' Forums.

I was just wondering about that - LibreOffice and OpenOffice both call it "Base", so I'm guessing a book on OO's Base would be valid for most of LibreOffice"s "Base" as well...?

Like I said earlier, LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice. So yes, most documentation that applies to one will apply to the other.

Have you ever used AutoFilter? (In libreoffice I think it's Data -> Filter -> AutoFilter, something similar at least). It sounds exactly like what you're looking for there.

(I don't know what one would call programs like Access, Base etc)

You never resplied to this.  ...
Database.