Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music/Archive 1

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Discography of Korean, Japanese, Chinese and so on

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)

Musical Excerpts

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)

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)

As far as I know, all music using the standard notation uses the Italian terms, even music published in China or wherever. I don't think a language-neutral version is necessary. ALTON .ıl 00:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Initial comments

On a quick glance, this looks good overall. But: Do you mean "major" and "minor" should always be lowercase? It's not clear. Also, maybe the "Titles" section could start with a concise explanation of "generic" "form" and "true title." Maurreen 06:44, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, they should be lowercase unless they start a sentence, which now that I think about it, would be very infrequent. I don't know how I can give a more concise explanation of true titles. It's a difficult concept to explain. Maybe a better explanation of generic titles will help clarify things. – flamurai (t) 14:34, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

I tried to explain things a bit better. Sometimes I forget that some of the audience may not be musically savvy. – flamurai (t) 15:09, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

1. We need guidelines as to where to put opus numbers like BWV and KV and so on. Brackets, commas, etc. 2. A big problem is really with international titles, especially German, French, and Italian, and searching for types of works that are given with a title in another language. Can we mis-use the Wikipedia link style to write something like [[Symphony|Symphonie]] FantastiqueThore 08:51, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The first question, I had something in there originally, but I removed it. I'll replace some of it. As for your second question, I don't know. That's really not something so clear-cut. – flamurai (t) 12:06, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Improved

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

Flats and sharps

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)

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)

What I see on my computer when I see the signs is simply boxes. Georgia guy 23:53, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

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)

My character map has a number of different fonts. Georgia guy 01:11, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

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)

More sharps and flats, et al

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)

Font problems??

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)

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)

Use of Unicode sharps and flats is an access barrier

I've looked though the character maps, and not too many fonts include both of these two Unicode symbols. Neither Windows IE, Opera, nor Firefox will render these symbols by default unless Arial Unicode MS is installed. Currently that font is only offered with the installation of Microsoft Word. Firefox for the debian Linux doesn't render it either, so this isn't just a "Microsoft problem". Not all potential readers of wikipedia articles are willing or knowlegable enough to exhaustively search for the unicode fonts that happen to support these two infrequently implemented symbols. Without these symbols rendering correctly, the articles using them can be quite confusing and not very useful to the reader. The choice of unicode sharps and flats seems more of an esthetics issue because the standard ASCII characters "b" and "#" have been sufficient and compatible workarounds for a very long time. There are alternate ways of formatting ASCII sharps and flats to look more professionally typeset that won't present compatibility issues such as the use of italics eg (G# and Bb), smaller Font size eg (G# and Bb)), superscripts eg (G^# or B^b) or subscripts (G_# or B_b). BigE1977 00:04, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Just FYI, my own experience is that Firefox on Debian and on MacOS X both render them fine. Maybe I installed a package earlier that pulled down the right fonts, I don't know.

Aside, note that either Unicode flat and sharp or the words flat and sharp are acceptable. If we're going to avoid the Unicode, we should standardise on the words only instead of sacrificing semantic value by using substitutions with muddy meanings. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:47, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

My understanding: Firefox, Safari, and Opera work fine as long as some font has the necessary Unicode characters, even if it is a different font from the one specified by the web site. MS Internet Explorer "is capable of displaying the full range of Unicode characters, but characters which are not present in the first available font specified in the web page will only display if they are present in the designated fallback font for the current international script (for example, only Arial font will be considered for Latin text, or Arial Unicode MS if it is also installed; subsequent fonts specified in a list are ignored)" (See: Unicode and HTML#Web browser support).

I propose some mention of the display issues of Unicode sharp and flat sign in the article. There is plenty of discussion about it on this page.--Dbolton 22:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Why are b and # deprecated for flat and sharp?

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)

# 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Still more sharps and flats

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)

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)

Instrumentation on wikiproject classical music

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)

"Seh' " not a stray quote

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).

Done fixed —Turangalila talk 14:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Can we formally adopt the hyphenated "-sharp" and "-flat"?

This has been mentioned above; I really think it's time something happened. Wikipedia really should have a clear standardized style with regard to how to write A-flat or G-sharp. Currently usage is all over the place, and the MoS itself is contradictory. I strongly believe the hyphen is much clearer and better:

It's one note (pitch class), it should have a one-word name if possible.
There's a difference between an F-sharp and a "sharp F".

If we can get a consensus on this, I'll happily take on at least some of the necessary cleanup, particularly to article titles (e.g. making C sharp minor a redirect to C-sharp minor and not the other way round.

PS: also, on this page, for clarity the sections "Flats and sharps" and "Major and minor" should be folded together under a single header, like "Note-names and keys" or some such. —Turangalila talk 14:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

01-June-2007: I have been converting articles to use "F-sharp" or "B-flat" in avoiding those dreadful unicodes which people have reverted for over 18 months. However, I noticed when searching with Google that the world still uses "F#" and "Eb" (especially in guitar notation). You remember the guitar chords: D#maj, Am, C#sus, Ebmaj, Ebm, F#dim, D#maj7. The only guideline should be to avoid unicodes but use "F#" for typesetting superscripted F# to illustrate an optional appearance. Banning #/b from F#/Eb is like spitting in the world's face or calling guitar players morons. -Wikid77 13:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Discussion copied over from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music:

I wanted to call attention here to my attempt at the music-MoS talkpage to generate a better consensus standard for writing the names of "black key" notes or keys on WP. Majority usage right now seems to favor writing out "sharp" or "flat," since those Unicode ^#'s and ^b's are a browser access problem...but there's alot of variation in using the hyphenated form ("C-sharp") versus the non-hyphenated ("C sharp").
I strongly favor the hyphenated form. It's one note and should be one word; I think most browsers won't put a linebreak in the middle of the hyphenated form; there's a difference between a B-flat and a "flat B"; and, well, I just like it better. To me "A-flat major" just looks right, while "A flat major" could be a two-dimensional commander. My books and scores mostly use the symbols, but seem to favor the hyphen when they don't.
Anyway, I think the style should be consistent if possible, and I'd appreciate folks chiming in on either side -- probably better over at the MoS page. Thanks, —Turangalila talk 20:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Until the actual Wikipages for B flat major etc. get hyphenated, I would be wary of going on a hyphenating spree just yet. Centy 17:17, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Actually I'm hoping to achieve a consensus for the MoS first, then change/move the article titles as necessary. Redirects should be available in either case, but my object is a standardized style, which doesn't yet exist. —Turangalila talk 19:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Key names shouldn't be hyphenated: I believe that if you look at the literature, "naked" keys are the norm. (Points for humor by Turangalila, though, as in the answer to the riddle: "What do you get if you drop a piano down a mineshaft?"). +ILike2BeAnonymous 17:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the points, but I'm not sure there even is a "norm". Most books on my shelves use the symbols; among those that don't, my Baker's, my Maynard Solomon Beethoven, and the translations in all my Dover scores use hyphens, while my Paul Henry Lang and Kobbe's use the "naked" style. I just think within WP it should be one or the other, & personally I feel the hyphenated style is clearer. —Turangalila talk 19:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

New discussion:

Support, I had thought it recommended this style for a long time. ALTON .ıl 00:54, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose as stated. When used as a noun (such as a note name C sharp) it should be unhyphenated. When used as an adjective (e.g. C-sharp major) it should be hyphenated. This is consistent with other hyphenation usages in English. —Wahoofive (talk) 20:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

That explains what's currently on the project page. If that's the proper standard it should be explained explicitly (and even with that standard some articles would need renaming). If that's consnensus, cool.

However: Again here, I don't think wider English usage is anywhere near as consistent you imply. To use an analogous nonmusical example, one sees both "President-elect" and "President elect" in different forums. Is there a particular style-manual or dictionary you're relying on? The nearest thing to on-point guidance I've found so far is from Dictionary.com's FAQ page : "[The hyphen] is used... 8) for compounds which begin with a single capital letter, e.g., H-bomb, U-turn."

Either way the grammar-dependent guideline strikes me as frankly a bit fussy and needlessly confusing, leading to the possibility of passages like "...after the cadence in B-flat minor, a sustained D flat leads to a sudden modulation to D-flat major...". —Turangalila talk 21:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I open my garage door with my garage-door opener. Don't you? —Wahoofive (talk) 02:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a garage, but a quick Google search shows that not everyone follows your rules. I'm trying to be serious here. FWIW I'm not sure the "A-flat" in "A-flat major" even is an "adjective"; and I don't much care. The MoS is here to try and make WP consistent and readable, not to reform or standardize the English language. —Turangalila talk 15:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Major keys

Hopefully this will be less contentious than the whole hyphen discussion. When a piece a music is written in a major key, can we make it a policy to actually write in major instead of just leaving it out. Eg. it will be Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, instead of just Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D.

There are many pages where anything in a major key loses the word major. Although we may know what we mean, this is highly ambiguous and confusing for new people. (Someone once asked me how Mozart wrote an entire symphony using just one note).

Centy 11:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. —Wahoofive (talk) 15:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that's actually the current standard, but perhaps some clarification is in order...I think I might write a draft guideline in my userspace for naming all notes, chords and modes & link to it here, to see if we can make clearer whatever consensus settles on. (of course there are cases where mode-mixture is so prevalent it's best to leave it just as D or whatnot, but that can be acknowledged in the guideline) —Turangalila talk 16:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

There are of course exceptions where the single-letter is most commonly used (Gershwin's Concerto in F and Bizet's Symphony in C). In instrumentation, they'll often mention that the clarinets are "in B flat" or the Horns are "in F". Should those stay? For your case above (Beethoven's Violin Concerto), I would just leave out the key as Beethoven only wrote one Violin Concerto. In other cases, often the opus or catalogue number is a much better disambiguator. But as for the typical description of a movement's traversal through various keys and chords I prefer to see the key-note used as an adjective and not a noun ("F major", "G7 chord", etc.) DavidRF 01:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

David, I was more thinking when we refer more formally to a piece of music in a list etc. , we should probably keep a standard. Even though Gershwin's Piano Concerto is commonly known as Concerto in F, I would much prefer consistency and call is Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F major when used more formally in a list or navigation box. You can still refer to the Concerto in F in passing during a prose section in the same way you could refer to the Appassionata or Paganini Rhapsody. Also when there's a lot of mode mixture, maybe we should drop the key altogether. Even saying the piece is in D implies to readers its in D major rather than it has more flexible tonality. Centy 12:24, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I do agree with you on keeping lists formal. I was just straining to find "exceptions". Gershwin and Bizet seemed like works that were almost exclusively described by "in F" or "in C". (Terry Riley's work would be the ultimate extreme in that regard). An example of works that need to be changed are Liszt's Transcendental Etudes. Those pages even have the bad form in their titles. For that case, I'd just name the pages simply "Trascendental Etude No. 1 (Liszt)" and let the navbox have the key label (with the major/minor in the navbox and not just the single letter).

I'm actually against omitting the major/minor in the prose as well (with the extreme cases like the Gershwin & Bizet titles excepted). There's really no reason for the prose to attempt to be clever or extra terse on wikipedia. These articles are often just skimmed for facts, so why not just spell things out all the time. (On yet another aside, referring to the Paganini Rhapsody a "Concerto in F" or the Appassionata as a "Sonata in F" just seems unnecessarily cryptic with or without the major/minor tag. That almost makes the user click on the wikilink to figure out what the author intended.) DavidRF 15:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

(reset margin) For article titles, check the WP:Classical music page. Generally keys are avoided unless they're the common title, or for redirects. In the case of the Gershwin I think using "F major" would be sacrificing accuracy for consistency, which is not a good idea. Similarly for the Riley In C or the Stravinsky Symphony in C or Concerto in D. Also in descriptive passages of, say, Strauss or Wagner, the major/minor label may cloud the issue. But where a piece is clearly in C major, the article should say so clearly. On David's question, major and minor should be applied only to keys and chords, definitely not to transpositions or instruments — there's no such thing as an "A minor clarinet".

What should definitely be discouraged is the use of shorthand, like "C" or "Cmaj" for C major, and "c" or "Cmin" or "Cm" for C minor. I also think chord quality should be written out, i.e. "G dominant-seventh chord" — "G7" is ambiguous for non-musicians, or even just non-jazzers. —Turangalila talk 20:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

A call for coordinated action

I have posted the text below at Talk:Augmented sixth chord. I reproduce it here because I think it's time we set up something more systematic and coordinated for the music theory articles, and this seems to be a proper place to discuss such a thing. – Noetica^♬♩ Talk 02:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

A consensus seems to have emerged that this article [Augmented sixth chord; but the same applies to very many] now needs coordinated and systematic work to raise it to the next level of quality. Like many or most of the music theory articles, it has evolved rather chaotically. It is not surprising, to students of the Way of Wikipedia, that such articles should need rethinking after their first couple of years. What is remarkable is that there is so much good information in them! We should respect the work of those who brought them to their present state, for at least assembling the material, and marshalling and maintaining it as well as they have.

Looking at the discussion above, we see evidence of dissatisfaction with specific content. But we also see some broader and some more basic issues raised, and it is not reasonable to deal with those here. That would be extremely inefficient; and it is not necessary, because there are other substantive articles with talk pages at which these issues are more usefully and effectively discussed (like spellings of the tritone, and precise regimented meanings for that term); and where there are not such articles, they can be made and perhaps should be made (like the article proposed above for six-four chords, whether cadential or not, and their proper naming and indications); and where issues are very broad and affect several articles, there are suitable places for principles to be laid out also (like how to indicate chords generally, with their various modifications and inversions, which is appropriate for Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(music): a neglected resource).

I think these issues have priority, and that we should focus on them before attempting to fix relatively complex problems specific to augmented sixth chords. So I suggest we all adjourn to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(music), call in a few other music active editors (by putting notices in the talk pages of relevant articles), and set an agenda for discussion there, and for discussion and action elsewhere as well.

What do people think about that? For myself, I am reluctant to take on much else until we have more orderly ways of operating worked out. Perhaps if we set up some sort of an overall program for the music theory articles, we can respect each other more and waste less time promoting our own prejudices and preferences, and more on making real progress that will be useful and satisfying for everyone concerned. We could then each use the skills we have – writing and improving text; the technicalities of tables, musical examples, etc.; or particular expertise with content – to produce articles that are deficient in none of these departments.

– Noetica^♬♩ Talk 02:44, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm good with this, although I wonder if this particular page is the right place. Maybe Music theory? That's an article which needs a good deal of work, and if we could reach some consensus there about terminology and the like, we could then apply it to other pages. This page is pretty moribund. —Wahoofive (talk) 04:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Wahoofive raises an important question, which had exercised me too. It seemed to me that this would be a good place to initiate discussion, at least. It may be moribund, but it won't be if we revive it. So anyway, my proposal is that we consider this question first:

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?

Any ideas, folks?

The next question might be this:

Q2: What issues need attention?

And a natural continuation might then be this:

Q3: What are the priorities among these issues? Which are more consequential, and which are less? What is the most effective order in which in which these issues might be addressed?

All subject to revision, of course. There are many ways to continue from there. I just think we need to do some rather free brainstorming first, and only then sort through the issues we identify in a more structured way. Given Q1 above, I'll now open a new section with it.

– Noetica^♬♩ Talk 05:35, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Action plan for music theory articles: Question 1

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)

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)

More flats and sharps: doubling

Hi -- I was generally in favor of the MoS's insistence on real unicode flats and sharps instead of graphics or "#" and "b", but I was writing the other day and needed a double sharp, and realized that no standard browser font supports the Unicode musical symbol for double sharp (U+1D12B). I know in some contexts, "F-double-sharp" would be acceptable to write, but not where there are many notes in a row to be named. Comments on this problem? I would think that we're going to need to allow Fx for F-double-sharp in some usages. Two flat signs closely approximate a double flat, but two sharp signs don't substitute for a double sharp. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

What I personally wish is that we could incorporate pictures of double sharps and double flats into the text, but they never seem to align properly (eg F

) still it's best if we just stick to F double sharp for now. It's not that often you get a whole string of double flats and sharps. Centy – reply• contribs – 10:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! The DoubleSharp.svg image's alignment is good enough for my purposes (it's at least as good as the unicode flats and sharps that my font shows, which are terribly misaligned horizontally). It's the issue where I don't want to write: "the motive is E#, G#, F-double-sharp, A#, B#, C-double-sharp" because of the huge extra space taken by the double-sharp symbols. (talking about some of the Skyriabin late pieces). Thanks! -- Myke Cuthbert (talk)

I just happened to read that paragraph with a page width that put the F at the end of a line and the

at the beginning of the next. How on earth can you force no-break? David Brooks 02:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The nobr HTML tag might prevent breaks:don't break this. - Rainwarrior 04:21, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, after checking that out, it's not standard HTML and doesn't work with a lot of browsers. You could maybe try packing it into a table with no padding or border? - Rainwarrior 04:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Wiki-forcing unicode fonts

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)

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)

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)

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)

Correction - "Arial Unicode MS" looks even better: F♯, B♭ David Brooks 18:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

I've discovered what might be a good solution to this problem in some of the multilingual articles. Wikipedia already has a Help:Multilingual support page intended to help people get the proper fonts installed, and on some pages using these characters have one of the little templates from Category:Multilingual support templates at the top right which link to it (see example). Why not create one of these templates for musical characters? - Rainwarrior 16:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

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)