Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music/Archive 1

message: It's not easy to express CJK musician name. So I tried to make a Template:Non-english discography. But the result is not so good because I'm poor at template, style or class. I need some music lover's help.
I think CJK discography need these components.
* Musician, Album Title, Released Year, Reissued Year, Cover, Original Title(in CJK or other), Romanization Title
Here is examples Shin Jung-hyeon(after templating), Hahn Daesoo(before templating) --Zepelin 09:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Discography of Korean, Japanese, Chinese and so on

message: How do people think musical examples (graphics) should be handled? Should tempo and dynamics be shown? These are all questions that need to be answered, as there is no standard. My idead of how they should look is at the page Porgy and Bess
:I think it depends on the size of the sample, and also the context in which you are using it.  For an example which is just a few notes, for example a leitmotif, you can get a musical point across without tempo and dynamics.  If you have at least several bars, however, dynamics and tempo are utterly essential to a complete representation of the music.  Of course there are cases (for example, 17th century and before) for which there are no tempo or dynamics in the original:  in those cases leave them that way.  Antandrus  (talk) 20:47, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: One may create two images, one with text such as tempo and dynamics in English, and one without text so that other languages may be added and the image used in non-English versions. This is suggested by Wikipedia:Preparing images for upload#Replace captions in the image with text. Hyacinth 11:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Musical Excerpts

message: I like your changes. The page is more clear now. Maurreen 02:41, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Improved

message: I have a problem with using Unicode for flats and sharps. The spaces before and after these symbols is much too large and it disrupts the flow of text. I hate the # and b too, but the Unicode isn't the best answer. We could suggest italicizing the b for flat even if the letter name isn't italicized (Bb major), and encourage the Unicode when it's not part of a sentence (graphic captions, formulas, and the like). —Wahoofive | Talk 05:17, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The spacing is an issue with the fonts installed on your particular system. On my system (GNOME with DejaVu fonts) it looks great. I say Unicode is the best answer. —Keenan Pepper 23:10, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What I see on my computer when I see the signs is simply boxes. Georgia guy 23:53, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably because none of your fonts contains sharp and flat characters. Do they appear in your character map? —Keenan Pepper 23:58, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My character map has a number of different fonts. Georgia guy 01:11, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, but do sharp and flat appear for any of them (or the one you normally use)? —Keenan Pepper 02:10, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flats and sharps 

message: Just want to clarify: When referring to a key with acciental, I always use a hyphen; i.e., B-flat, C-sharp. Perhaps, if this is correct, it should be added. Also, on another matter, I've italicized generic titles (i.e., List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)).... Is this incorrect? --bleh fu talk fu June 29, 2005 19:21 (UTC)
:Only use the hyphen when it's acting as an adjective: B-flat major. If referring to the note, omit the hyphen: the first note is B flat. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:22, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  More sharps and flats, et al 

message: On the standard font, when I see the Unicode sharp sign, it is a box. However, when I copy-paste the sign into the address box, what I see is a real sharp sign! However, it doesn't work for the flat sign. How come it works for the sharp but not the flat?? Georgia guy 01:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I found out that that is in a font called MS Sans Serif. My computer also has a font called MS Reference Sans Serif where I see both a real flat sign and a real sharp sign! Georgia guy 01:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font problems?? 

message: Exactly why are b and # deprecated? Sure, they are not quite the correct symbols, but they are pretty close and probably comprehensible to a very high proportion of readers. Until the Unicode symbols are available universally, why limit access by insisting on them when the slightly inelegant alternative actually works? 138.37.199.206 10:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: # may be close, but b is not.  "Bb" looks silly and/or confusing.  Best to write out "-flat" if you really don't want to use the symbol.  Powers T 13:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see this. Bb is an incredibly commonly used alternative for people who can't or won't use the real symbol. You look at it and you think, ah yes, they mean B flat even though it might appear at first sight - to someone who has never seen it done ever before - to say "BB". It may look silly or confusing to you but I think you are taking a particularly purist standpoint about the use of musical symbols, and I do not think it is necessarily a practical stance for this particular place. If it was, articles would not keep being subject to sequences of reversion between people who want the right symbols and people who say "er but I can only see blobs, boxes or whatever". If I say "Trumpet in Eb" I really think that in the context of a music article which has already referred to trumpets in A, D, G and C, that it's quite unlikely anyone will be stuck for very long going "blimey, what on earth is a TRUMPET IN EB?" And if they are, they are probably so far adrift that I am not sure the real symbol is going to help them much either! :) 138.37.199.206 11:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, in context it might not be confusing.  It still looks silly to my eyes, more so in certain fonts than others.  If you don't want to use the real symbol, use "-flat" or "-sharp".  The MOS allows for that.  Powers T 14:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for that but it looking silly in your eyes isn't sufficient reason to never use it. I can counter that by simply saying "yes but it looks useful in mine". As for what the MOS allows for, well what are we discussing here? My contention, with respect, is that the MOS is too restrictive and should be broadened to allow for Bb and A#. I Note that at the top of the MOS it makes the quite bold claim "The consensus of many editors formed the conventions described here." I don't see this consensus, but rather a couple of people deciding, in perfectly good faith, what they liked. I do not, with the greatest of respect, see a consensus being reached after many editors discussing it - or is that in an archive somewhere? - in which case I will apologize most prettily! :) 138.37.199.206 18:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know how or when the consensus was formed, but I think you'll discover that such consensus exists if you start changing high-profile articles from the Unicode symbols to "b" and "#".  =)  Powers T 21:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, notes like "F[]" and "E[]" look far worse than F# & Eb, so the unicode sharps/flats lose the battle for looks.  Bottom line is what the world does.  I have been fighting unicode problems for over 10 years, so don't expect unicode-nirvana in January 2010.  The world uses F# or "Eb" so that should not be forbidden.  Banning C#/Gb is like thinking "z" is silly this year, so the guideline becomes "Twilight Sone" and striped "sebra" etc. -Wikid77 12:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why are b and # deprecated for flat and sharp? 

message: Sorry to bring this up again, but this is often the cause of minor 'edit wars' and clean-up issues.  Hyphen or no hyphen?  The consensus above is to say "C-sharp minor" and "B-flat major" but the actual wikipedia pages are C sharp minor and B flat major.  Should we go without the hyphens or change the key pages to have hyphens? DavidRF 21:21, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 01-June-2007: The past few days, I have been restoring hyphens to "C-sharp minor" (etc.) within that article's text and ensuring redirection to each article for each music-key.  I have read hours of talk/discussion pages and noticed horror about all the articles which had used hyphens before the music-key articles were moved/renamed without hyphens.  There is a 90% danger that Wikipedia concensus will run counter to world-usage (such as article "titles" with only the first letter capitalized: "History of world wars"), so beware making guidelines which lack a world-view.  Ask first WWWD? What would the World do?  How many publish articles with one capital letter?  The world writes "C-sharp minor" hyphenated and expects articles for that. Also, ask "Would it make Wikipedia look like a joke?" -Wikid77 12:49, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Still more sharps and flats 

message: This discussion is on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music.' Classical music articles for pieces scored for a complex orchestra usually feature a section called "Instrumentation" or "Orchestration". First, they should all be unified. This topic is a controversial one currently. There is the format issue. Somehow, this issue must be resolved and put on the Wikiproject classical page as a guideline. — Andy W. (talk/contrb.) 02:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Instrumentation on wikiproject classical music 

message: That is an abbreviation apostrophe. The original word is "sehe" and the convention is that when ending vowels in German are omitted they are replaced with an apostrophe. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DChapii (talk • contribs) 17:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: fixed —Turangalila talk 14:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Seh' " not a stray quote 

message: Arising out of discussion above, I put forward the following question for focused discussion:
Q1: What is the best location for a wide-ranging discussion of the music theory articles, to develop a plan for more coordinated action than we've had so far, and to settle on some rational, consensual guidelines?
– Noetica♬♩ Talk 05:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a WikiProject. There's a WikiProject Music and a WikiProject Music terminology. The latter of these might be a place to start on some of the topics you're concerned about. That would be the place, for example, to establish a usage guideline for the terms diatonic and chromatic. —Wahoofive (talk) 15:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Action plan for music theory articles: Question 1

message: 02-June-2007: (revised) It is sorta pathetic that the world is 99% MS Windowsish and unicode sharps/flats are still trouble.  However, it is worth a try to Wiki-force that font ("MS Reference Sans Serif") in limited sections of a music article to attempt to reveal those horrid unicodes, especially for C-natural.  The Wiki-force could be HTML tags:
:: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"
As long as the font is limited to short phrases/notes, it wouldn't be a total violation of each user's personal font choice for displaying Wiki articles (plus the issue of WP feeding articles to other websites).  Here's the result of using the above font-face tag: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)" (previous font here).  Compare several fonts (to see how few work):
:* Courier-New font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* Arial font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* Lucida Sans Unicode font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* Symbol font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* MS Sans Serif font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* Bookman-Old-Style font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* The "Arial Unicode MS" font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
:* The "MS Arial Unicode" font: "D♯=E♭ (D#=Eb)"  (previous font here)
The troublesome unicodes are really needed mainly for C-natural, which would justify a Wiki-force to override each user's font to ensure the unicode-natural symbol appears.  Of course, none of the above fonts worked for me, so at this point, I've spent days trying to display unicode sharps/flats.  Wow, I could have composed an entire piece of music during that time. (huh?)  -Wikid77 01:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you are suggesting here. What is the point of specifying a font face? Also, what version of Windows are you running, and what browser? (The last few versions of Windows have had pretty good unicode support as far as I've seen, right out of the box.) On an older computer I've seen the problem remedied by enabling support for international languages in I think the regional language settings (it was one or two checkboxes to click). I believe at this point both Opera and Firefox automatically come set up to display these unicode characters properly (I think IE is fine with it too at this point). - Rainwarrior 04:49, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For clarification, IE7 (the latest version) still doesn't have full support for Unicode characters unless the Unicode character is found in the first font specified by the webpage (see my comment above]). From the list above, Lucida Sans Unicode font is the only one that worked for me in IE7. --Dbolton 16:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting; you seem to have hit on the fact that the Lucida Sans Unicode characters are much more nicely designed than the default MS Gothic characters. So at least on my browser, this text: F♯ produces F♯ which looks more professional. How can that be turned into a macro? David Brooks 18:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Correction - "Arial Unicode MS" looks even better: F♯, B♭ David Brooks 18:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You could make it into a template, but I don't think it's a good idea to be forcing the user to use a specific font because you think it looks better, especially since the availability of fonts seems to be the primary problem here. - Rainwarrior 14:34, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

text: However, on the issue of whether to render sharps and flats using the unicode symbols or the number sign and lower-case b, I disagree with the latter for several reasons. The symbols do not have the correct meaning, which is the biggest issue I have with it.  Second, modern search engines are not thwarted by unicode symbols. Google handles these characters perfectly, for instance. Third, your reference to things like guitar tabs (at Talk:Circle of fifths or Template talk:Circle of fifths) having used these symbols is somewhat invalidated by the fact that most of those files are encoded in a format that does not make these characters an option. Internet guitar tabs go back a long way, and at the time ASCII was the most useful format for reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion. Wikipedia is internally encoded in a unicode format. It is encoded this way because it is a very good standard for international text encoding, and support for it has only been increasing over the last 10 years. I don't think the majority of users should be forced to use the wrong symbol to avoid a problem for the minority of users who have out of date software. Browsers which support the characters in question without problem are very freely available. - Rainwarrior 05:22, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since IE6 and IE7 hold the majority, this is not a minority of users. This doesn't necessarily mean that we should change because of IE. For example, Wikipedia made a similar choice with the OGG media format (until the recent Java applet, the majority of user had to install additional software to view or listen to it).--Dbolton 16:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, so the problem is not that IE can't display the character, but rather that the user does not have the required font? IE6/7 may have the majority of users, but how many of them are missing the required fonts? I haven't actually seen the problem in quite some time, which is why I'm assuming it's not as widespread as it used to be (don't the more recent versions of windows come with these fonts already installed?). I think it would be better to try to assist those who don't have the correct fonts rather than to replace it with symbols like # and b. - Rainwarrior 14:34, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Your template suggestion is a good one. However, it is important to note that the primary issue is the limitation of a users' browser, regardless of whether they have the correct fonts (see the "Technical Note" at the top of Help:Special characters). It appears that Template:IPA was created to properly render IPA pronunciation symbols in IE6/7. I think this type of template maybe more helpful and is more akin to David Brooks' font tag proposal above.--Dbolton 22:13, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki-forcing unicode fonts