User talk:Jerome Kohl/Archive 3

List of works in unusual time signatures

I fail to see how Sting's song I Hung My Head is a compound-triple 9/8 time signature. It does not have a DUH-da-da DUH-da-da DUH-da-da cadence at all. In addition, the news article reference I sited clearly states that it is a 9/8 song (see the fourth full paragraph, where it states: "He previously tackled musical genres like jazz, funk and world music, played around with unconventional time-signatures (he uses a 9/8 tempo on "I Hung My Head", for example)...".

I have no problem with the deletion of "Gravity", as I was unable to find any online reference (which is a shame, as it is a good example).

I still do not know why somebody undid my deletion of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" in the 7/4 section. That song is 4/4 all the way through. Kevicool (talk) 23:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

It's possible I have mis-identified the Sting song, but the one I have heard bits of is decidedly DUH-da-da DUH-da-da DUH-da-da. In any case, the quotation still does not support the claim of irregular division—merely a 9/8 signature, which even in conventional compound-triple is of course unusual in popular music genres generally (Irish traditional music is probably the most important exception). The thing here is that what is and is not regarded as "unusual" for the purposes of this article is spelled out with great precision in the article's lead, and 9/8 time is specified there as "usual". We have been around and around on this business on the Talk page, and it seems that about an equal number of editors come down on each side of the question of whether it is really about unusual signatures, or rather about unusual metres (see my recent addition to the article lede concerning Britten's Passacaglia from Peter Grimes, notated in 4/4 merely as a convenience, but plainly in 11/4 time). If the former rally is to be insisted upon, then 8/2 time remains in the "unusual" category, even when expressing nothing more than a slow quadruple time, but no matter how eccentric a division of 9/8 is used, the signature remains "usual". The acceptance of irregular divisions of metres like 8/8 and 9/8 has been something of a fragile truce, so documenting such irregularities is essential in light of the "no unsourced claims" policy in place on this list.

I hope you or some other editor is able to find a source documenting "Gravity", if it is such a good example. I don't know it, but I do know literally hundreds of other pieces that would make marvelous examples, if only I could find a source documenting their time signatures.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:01, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Relistening to the Sting song, I hear a cadence of da-da-DAH-da-da-da-da-DAH-da, with the "accents" on beats 3 and 8. As a drummer, it struck me as an odd rhythm, hence my belief that it was a likely candidate for an "unusual" 9/8 time. Maybe I'll look through some of my older Modern Drummer magazines to see if there are any useable reference sources for "Gravity". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevicool (talk • contribs) 04:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

And no accent at all on beat 1?! That makes it sound like you have misidentified the downbeat. In any case, it is OR until a source can be found that specifies an irregular metrical subdivision consistent throughout the song, as opposed to a simple syncopation. Up to this point, I would say that this amply justifies the requirement for sources in the Unusual Time Signatures list—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

List of compositions by Béla Bartók

Dear Dr. Kohl, Recently I focused attention to the List of compositions by Béla Bartók and think I expanded and correct it significantly. I also made a sortable table by Sz, BB, DD and Bartók's own three 3 opus catalogues. As I know you have a sharp and critical eye, your contributions are welcome (I still miss early Sz. no's)! Best regards, RobertKennesy (talk) 19:21, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I am flattered by your request. I will look over the list as you ask, with special attention to the early Sz numbers. However, I am sure that you have been thorough in your efforts, and doubt whether my poor abilities could add anything.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Tombeau

The article was written by Mathias Rösel for both. See talk page.Galassi (talk) 22:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I have just come from the talk page. The problem now is that there are no reliable sources, since the ones offered are merely citing the same article. Surely the claims can be documented from somewhere in that list of references at the end. In the meantime, correcting the grammar and syntax cannot go ahead unless Mr. Rösel does so on the Polyhymnion site, and somehow this seems to violate the anonymity policy of Wikipedia articles, since it prevents other editors from contributing.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Page Refs

Hi, JK. The style of citation template used in Mary Bauermeister can include the (total) number of pages in the specification. This would of course be unchanging for all citations. (In this case, it's 259.) The cited page number appears not in the footnote but alongside the index number in the article text. (See also this item) Agreed, it can be confusing and unhelpful--maybe sufficient reason for not including the 'number of pages' specification. Btw, many thanks for your contribution to the enthralling discussion! Cheers Bjenks (talk) 01:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Erm. OK. I think I can (just barely) follow this. OCLC entries may include the total page-count of a book, is that right? Can the general reader be able to understand this, without an elaborate additional annotation? On the other hand, can this reference simply be made clear?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed the general reader can't be expected to cope with the ambiguity. I therefore removed the '259'. The number of pages is hardly important information, anyway. As more citations are pulled from that same book in future, they will be shown as a..b..c.., etc, as in this example (refs 2 and 3). The advantage is that the page number is given each time directly alongside the article text. Another way of plural-citing from a book is shown here. Yes, the goal should be to make a citation as clear and accessible as possible. Cheers Bjenks (talk) 08:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Good, thanks. I am familiar with this form of multiple-entry citations and, though I personally find it extremely ugly, I respect others' divergent points of view. I think the problem her may have had something to do with the fact that this template actually seems designed for a bibliography entry, rather than a footnote entry, and its misplaced usage makes these refs look amateurish to my editor's eye. However, I do recognize that such entries in footnotes can be found all over Wikipedia, and I'm not about to get bogged down in arguing for a reform over on Wikipedia:Citing Sources, or the MoS discussion page.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Fitzwilliam Sonata

Hello Mr. Kohl. We have the set of Händel's beautiful recorder sonatas at the Wikipedia Featured sounds candidates. Your comment would be great, you seems to be expert:)) Greetings from the Czech Republic, have a nice day. --Vejvančický (talk) 18:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Broken consort

Can we deal with this "Morley consort" thing? Redheylin (talk) 21:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Certainly. Has someone found a source at last? Badagnani seems to think there is one in that huge list of GoogleBooks links, but I haven't found one, nor has anyone yet plugged one into the article. That's all I'm waiting for.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:34, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to Meetup/Seattle6, a focus group

Hello. I'm part of a research group at the University of Washington (Seattle campus), and my group is reaching out to Wikipedians in the Puget Sound area. We're hosting a focus group designed to gather information on what Wikipedians would like to know about each other when interacting on Wikipedia. Our end goal is to create an embedded application that helps people quickly know more about others' history and activity on Wikipedia, and we feel our design will be much more useful if it's based on insights of users like you.

I'm hoping that the chance to help out local researchers, to engage in lively face-to-face discussion with other Seattle Wikipedians, and to contribute to Wikipedia in a new way will entice you to join us. The session lasts 2 hours and snacks are provided. Sessions will be held on UW Seattle campus - directions will be sent after registration. Your contribution will be greatly appreciated!

Willing and able to help us out? RSVP here. Want to know more? Visit our user talk page . Please help us contact other local Wikipedians, too! Commprac01 (talk) 02:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Microtonal music

Please don't characterize edits you disagree with as "Vandalism" unless they were clearly meant to disrupt. When in doubt, don't accuse. The edits you reversed with a "rvv" included a dispute in comments, and somebody's attempt to move towards hyperlinked references. — Gwalla | Talk 17:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Teenly

Wikipedia can be an impersonal enterprise at times, but there is a living being behing every pseudonymous Wikipedian. I do not know whether the passing of a human being whose path once crossed yours in a small way is a matter of concern to you; but in case it is, I am bringing THIS to your attention because you once made her happy, and for that I thank you. Fenneck (talk) 21:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Date format in Stockhausen and bots

I noticed your struggle with bots, Rjwilmsi in particular, about the style of dates used in Karlheinz Stockhausen. I fear you are fighting a losing battle, given WP:MOS#Dates which seems to be rigidly enforced. I can see only two ways forward: to submit to Wikipedia rules, or to add {{Bots|deny=Rjwilmsi}} to the article, although the latter is sometimes frowned upon. Sympathetically, Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your sympathy, I appreciate it. I have contacted Rjwilmsi on his Talk page, and he has been very accommodating. I think perhaps he now understands that this is not so much an issue of date formats, as of correctly rendering book titles in a bibliography (the style of dates used elsewhere throughout the article is entirely in line with Wikipedia guidelines). He also now understands that his software is catching only the first, and not the second occurrence of the ordinal abbreviation in cases of paired dates. Thank you also for providing the template to block, if necessary, Rjwilmsi's well-meant corrections. For the time being, at least, I will not risk antagonizing him by employing this device.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Response to source of information for Three Movements from Petrushka

Hello. The source I listed for the background information of Petrouchka was not from a book. When I ordered the sheet music from the International Music Company, E. Lee Bailey wrote a one page introduction to the piece. I doubt that you will find this information anywhere else online. Imhyunho (talk) 07:05, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

In that case, the reference ought not to have been formatted as if it were a book by E. Lee Bailey. The correct form would have been: E. Lee Bailey, "Introduction" [or "Preface", or whatever it is titled], in Igor Stravinsky, Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka [or however the title appears on the cover or half-title page] (New York: International Music Company, [year of publication]), [page number on which the introduction appears]. I do not own a copy of this score, or I could make the appropriate corrections myself.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

George Antheil

Hello, I wonder if you could wait to change the refs etc until I am finished editing and have removed the tag. It will stop edit conflicts etc. Thanks a lot.--Slp1 (talk) 16:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Like I said in my edit summary to the last reversion: sorry, I didn't notice the "under heavy construction" banner at the top of the article. I've restored some material lost in your single reversion (I had actually made three changes before you caught this).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:05, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I see you saw it without this!! no worries. I'll keep on for a while longer.--Slp1 (talk) 16:02, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Moment

I didn't bother to read your entire message but my note read "#REDIRECT Momente". Hyacinth (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. It looks as if you believe that "Moment" is merely a translation of the German "Momente", which is not the case. "Momente" is plural, and the reference of the concept of "Moment" was not originally to the work of that title (which consists of thirty sections, each designated a "moment" but which are composed in a scale ranging from "pure moment form" to a very weak form regarded as the opposite extreme), but rather to Kontakte. It really would be most useful if you would read an article carefully before changing a redirect from or to it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Michael Harrison article

Hi there, I saw your edits on the Michael Harrison article, good edits. I'm unsure whether audio is a usable source, but Radiom has an interview with him wherein he talks all about his harmonic piano, including the details of his tuning and the setup of the piano. It's here:

http://radiom.org/detail.php?omid=MC.1992.08.07.A (It's in the second half of the first part). Should be enough to source the unsourced claims if that's an acceptable ref format. Conical Johnson (talk) 04:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

It might be regarded as a "self-published" source, as opposed to a "reliable, third-party" one, depending on the exact nature of the content, and what it might be used to verify. Thanks for calling this to my attention—I shall have a browse.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:05, 16 June 2009 (UTC).

Musical notation

Greetings. Could you please take a look at this revert and see if you agree with it. Thanks. Rigaudon (talk) 13:55, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Basically I do agree with it, but I think I can see through the text a distorted rendering of Willi Apel's The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900–1600. It is a paraphrase of Apel's discussion of keyboard scores, including, I think, the business about the five-line staff first being introduced in France. In the Wikipedia article no date is given, but Apel attributes this usage—for keyboard scores only—to Attaignant, in 1529–30. Apel also says that "it was not until about 100 years later that this method became generally accepted". This squares with the "well into the 17th century" business.

Other types of notation, however, do not necessarily conform to this time-frame. Apel also discusses lute tablature, for example, where the lines of the "staff" correspond to the number of basic strings of the instrument (usually six in the 16th century but sometimes seven in the 17th), and this notation persists into the 18th century. Chant notation, on the other hand, is traditionally written on a staff of only four lines, and that practice continues as a standard until after the middle of the 20th century, at least, if not right down to the present.

The bottom line is that I support the reversion, but the passage badly needs rewriting (with references) to clarify just what is being described.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:25, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. (And I agree it needs rewriting.) Rigaudon (talk) 19:43, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Cologne Lowland

Jerome, thank you for calling for the references which I have now added. In my tiredness I had omitted them. I have also put an explanatory note on the talk page. Hope this helps. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it does help. It was I who created the English version of this article, from the one on the German Wikipedia, and up until now have known only "Cologne Bight" as the English name for the region, which was what I titled the article. A later editor objected that this English name was too obscure, and insisted on changing it to the German "Kölner Bucht", so I was startled to learn there is this "standard" English name (which it seems to me ought to reflect a German original of "Kölner Niederland" or "Tiefland", but that's the way these things go sometimes).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Circle of fifths

Hi, Jerome. If you're around, I'd appreciate if you could double check this edit. Many thanks. Rigaudon (talk) 19:01, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It looked like a particularly unhelpful edit to me, so I reverted it.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 07:11, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I was uncomfortable with it, but other edits showed that the IP was not a vandal, and that edit was made with a lot of confidence, seemingly. Rigaudon (talk) 07:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what your background in the field of music theory might be, but at a certain point the developing student comes up against so-called "atonal theory". Most of the leading authorities in this field are American (Milton Babbitt, Allen Forte, Donald Martino, George Perle, John Rahn), and set out from the notions of pitch class and, more pertinent to the present issue, interval class. The Wikipedia article on the latter accurately describes the term as "the shortest distance in pitch class space between two unordered pitch classes." In the line of thinking developing from this, every interval larger than a tritone is regarded as a "version" of one of the interval classes a tritone or smaller (much as in traditional tonal theory intervals larger than an octave—"compound intervals"—are regarded as reduceable to "simple intervals" less than an octave), and the interval class is treated as privileged over other forms ("transformations") of it. Consequently, the perfect fifth is "merely" an inverted perfect fourth. I suspect this framework of thinking is where this anonymous editor is coming from. The force of the argument comes from the principle of revolution: namely, when the student discovers "everything you've been taught is wrong", the newly offered teaching becomes something like revealed truth. The freshly initiated zealot then goes about trying to convert everybody and everything in sight. Don't misunderstand me: the idea of interval class is extremely useful in the right context. The problem here is one of conflict with a more generally familiar traditional theoretical framework going back many centuries: the perfect fifth was regarded as taking precedent over the fourth (and other, smaller intervals) because the superparticular ratio expressing it (3:2) used smaller numbers than the one defining the perfect fourth (4:3), major third (5:4), etc. or, alternatively, when ascending the overtone series, the fifth is encountered before the fourth, major third, minor third, etc.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:38, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, my days as a student are far over... I've had my BA for about 5 years now. As much as your logic might make sense, that was not my intention. From what I can recall, the count is always upwards: the circle of fifths adds sharps, while the circle of fourths adds flats. On the other hand, being a jazz musician I expect to be criticized by classical scholars on a regular basis. It seems to me as if the music articles around here are somewhat biased towards the classical approach, only mentioning the jazz approach as a mundane alternative, which is sort of "frowned upon." According to the way I was educated, the diatonic circle of fifths goes like this:

$I->V->ii->vi->iii->vii$^o$->IV->(I)$

From the diminished chord onward, it just does not sound right. Moreover, in the description the diminished fifth between B and F (for greater convenience, let's assume we're in C major) is mentioned. Notice that the first chord (in the example given in the article) is F, followed by B. Therefore, the actual interval is an augmented fourth between F and B, that is unless you count downwards. In any case, that portion of the text should be fixed.

Lastly, I remember the upwards count from my earlier days as a classical pianist. 87.69.130.159 (talk) 23:52, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Your reply will be greatly appreciated. 87.69.130.159 (talk) 22:39, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

You are making me feel old! Five years ago is hardly "far over" from my point of view—I earned my own BMus in 1968! FWIW, in pitch-class space there is no "up" or "down"—only the shorter or the longer distance (except for the tritone and unison, which are equidistant). The circle of fifths likewise has no "up" or "down", only clockwise and anticlockwise. In the case of the description you tried to change, however, the resolution of the problem is more to do with the source—not actually cited in the article Circle of fifths, but referred to indirectly via the "Main article" link to Circle progression. There you will find that the example is actually being quoted from Bruce Benward and Marilyn Nadine Saker, Music In Theory and Practice, seventh edition (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003). I do not have a copy of this book handy, but ultimately it depends on whether Benward and Saker refer to the progression as one of fifths or of fourths. To judge from the quoted matter, they do both. Since the article Circle of fifths is not titled "Circle of fourths" and, as I have already said, the interval of the (undirected) fifth takes precedence historically over the fourth, it seems less confusing to the non-expert reader to keep "fifths".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, although I have several points in reply to this. I have to go so I will complete my answer later. 87.69.130.159 (talk) 00:51, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Come to think of it, since I do not possess music theory books at the moment (I've been far more busy actually making music – composing, arranging, harmonizing/reharmonizing, playing, improvising etc.), I will not contest this matter any further. I'll probably have to start teaching soon anyway, so I guess it will gradually refresh my memory as far as these details go. 87.69.130.159 (talk) 20:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)