Manual of Style | ||||||||||
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This I hope might one day be a part of the WP:MOS.
It came out of work on the reentrant tuning article. Looking for examples I became aware that the music stave examples already in Wikipedia were some of them first string first, others first string last. Obviously, within a single article that was going to be very confusing.
So I began looking for whether there was any convention, and the answer seems to be no. And the reason for this, once I found someone who actually said there is no convention, wasn't hard to find... There's an inconsistency between the way guitar and other instrument strings are conventionally numbered, and the way they're conventionally listed. In fifty years of reading them I never even noticed, but once it was pointed out it was really obvious.
And the conventions make more sense than you might at first think, and are common to both classically and non-classically trained musos. I think the string numbering probably comes from tablature. It's natural to have the string furthest from you at the top, and it's natural to number strings from the top down. The listing of strings probably comes from chord charts or the like. It's natural to have the string closest to you on the left, and then to start with that string when listing the pitches.
But there are a couple of the many suggestions to change it listed in the external links section. IMO Wikipedia shouldn't support or otherwise these. We use the standards as they are.
So that's what I'm proposing. Andrewa ( talk) 19:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
The various Wikiprojects that might be interested all seem inactive, with the possible exception of WP:WikiProject Guitarists. Hmmmm.... Andrewa ( talk) 06:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guitarists#Proposed style guideline. Andrewa ( talk) 19:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music)#Proposal regarding stringed instrument tunings.
There has been a (very constructive) suggestion there that I should search for articles that might need to change as a result of the proposal, and involve those active on those articles.
I've done some of this searching already, and the proposal is largely just documenting what we end up doing anyway, see may comments at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music)#Proposal regarding stringed instrument tunings. But agree it's time for another look, and the first I turned up was minor changes to the Lute article, see Talk:Lute#Style guideline for tunings. The Lute article is actively under development, so we might get some good input from there.
More to follow I expect. Andrewa ( talk) 04:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
See Talk:Helmholtz pitch notation#Another possible variation for another possible change to the proposal, a little more widespread in its implications. Andrewa ( talk) 18:49, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
From the discussion there: use of the apostrophe/related characters is definitely wrong. I seem from this article I used the symbol ˌ or ˌˌ for the sub-prime - not sure how valid that is. Interesting. Andrewa ( talk) 00:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Not a lot of joy at Talk:Helmholtz pitch notation. Articles which use this possible variation already include lute and mandora (both those links are permalinks to the current versions as I write, so they won't have changed even if the article in question has). I'll add any others I find. The giveaway sign is using a quote on an upper-case letter. Andrewa ( talk) 16:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
String gauges are almost always... perhaps always... listed as per string number.
Hmmm... curiouser and curiouser... Andrewa ( talk) 16:31, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
The main thing that still concerns me about this MOS page is that there's no explicit statement that string tunings are better described as actual pitches of indiidual strings rather than as pitch classes of strings or courses.
See http://tunings.pbworks.com/pitch-class-notation for where I'm coming from on this. Andrewa ( talk) 06:45, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I've removed the historical tag... there seems no dipsute that this is a helpful part of the MOS, even if rarely used. Interested in other views of course! The contributor who posted the tag seems to have sought no discussion, nor have they removed the link from MOS:music. Andrewa ( talk) 06:55, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with most of the points in this proposal. It tackles a sticky topic and deals with it logically and concisely. I have just two caveats:
1) When discussing string gauges for an instrument that nearly always uses wound strings, including the "w" after every gauge seems both fussy and not conducive to easy reading. I would propose instead that if an -unwound- string comes up in that context, it simply be indicated with a "p" after the gauge number (for "plain"). This, too, is a convention that's been around for many years. In fact, when it comes to the guitar there is a "cross-over" point from gauges 0.026 to 0.018 in which one should probably -always- indicate "w" ot "p", since these gauges are apt to appear on a guitar in either form quite commonly.
2) My other caveat concerns Helmholz notation for pitch class. I say Helmholz notation should be abandoned in favor of scientific pitch notation is all modern discussions of instrument tunings. While Helmholz certainly has historical value, it is, nonetheless, a fussy, confusing, and frequently misused system. (What, for example, is one to make of C' as opposed to c', or cc as opposed to CC -- both of which I have seen, sometimes within the same text!)
By contrast, scientific notation is simple, unambiguous, and easily learned and remembered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.174.105 ( talk) 21:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:
Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?
It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica Tea? 00:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Helmholz pitch notation is fussy, ambiguous, and archaic. It is an artifact of the 19th century infancy of the science of acoustics, and has been abandoned in favor of Scientific Pitch Notation in most modern texts. While a few standard music texts (such as Piston's Orchestration) still use Helmholz notation, nearly all of these texts were written 30-50 (or more) years ago. Furthermore, there are a number of other pitch notation systems, most of them also of 19th century origin, which are similar to, yet not identical with Helmholz notation, making for additional confusion.
Scientific Pitch Notation is simple, straightforward, and unambiguous. It should be the only system used when informational material -- such as the tuning of an instrument -- is given.
Using Helmholz notation in tuning charts is akin to using Roman numerals to express string gauges. I'd like to see a consensus reached on removing the Helmholz references in this style guide, and simply explaining the Scientific Notation system, which is ubiquitous in conttemporary usage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.183.146 ( talk) 08:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
The main problem with (so-called) Scientific pitch notation (SPN) is that (as normally used) it looks like so many other things in related fields:
The candidates are not just SPN and Helmholtz. There are many, including but not only:
I can't see any prospect of Wikipedia adopting any one of these as its standard, for good reasons in each case. I could be wrong. Andrewa ( talk) 05:23, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
The other, perhaps even bigger, problem is that Wikipedia is not the place to advocate adoption of a worldwide standard. Rather, we use and report what other people use and report. Andrewa ( talk) 01:29, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
I changed the word "always" in this boxed section to "in general".
Rationale: these statements are generally, but not universally true for all stringed instruments. For example:
At any rate, there are enough prominent exceptions that "always" was not accurate, so I changed it to something more appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.162.249 ( talk) 04:36, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
And I've changed it back, under WP:BRD. I take the harp example as a good one, but I think it needs more discussion.
Perhaps with a very few exceptions, such as some harps? Generally is toothless. It needs to be far stronger than that. Andrewa ( talk) 00:11, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
The Listing strings in text section says that note names should be separated by dashes, yet hyphens are used in the example. Over at MOS:MUSIC#Stringed instrument tunings, en dashes are used but not described as such. Should there be spaces separating the note names from the dashes?-- Theodore Kloba ( talk) 15:53, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
I have updated hyphens to unspaced en dashes. I have also changed apostrophes to prime symbols.
An additional comment: The sub-prime symbol generated by Please see
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music#Helmholtz pitch notation for this discussion. --
Theodore Kloba (
talk) 20:23, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
<sub><small>I</small></sub>
does not match the character used in the
Helmholtz pitch notation article, which uses Unicode U+0375, "Greek Lower Numeral Sign" (͵) created with ͵
. Is there a reason that the subscript "I" is preferred over the other option?--
Theodore Kloba (
talk) 20:20, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
Manual of Style | ||||||||||
|
This I hope might one day be a part of the WP:MOS.
It came out of work on the reentrant tuning article. Looking for examples I became aware that the music stave examples already in Wikipedia were some of them first string first, others first string last. Obviously, within a single article that was going to be very confusing.
So I began looking for whether there was any convention, and the answer seems to be no. And the reason for this, once I found someone who actually said there is no convention, wasn't hard to find... There's an inconsistency between the way guitar and other instrument strings are conventionally numbered, and the way they're conventionally listed. In fifty years of reading them I never even noticed, but once it was pointed out it was really obvious.
And the conventions make more sense than you might at first think, and are common to both classically and non-classically trained musos. I think the string numbering probably comes from tablature. It's natural to have the string furthest from you at the top, and it's natural to number strings from the top down. The listing of strings probably comes from chord charts or the like. It's natural to have the string closest to you on the left, and then to start with that string when listing the pitches.
But there are a couple of the many suggestions to change it listed in the external links section. IMO Wikipedia shouldn't support or otherwise these. We use the standards as they are.
So that's what I'm proposing. Andrewa ( talk) 19:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
The various Wikiprojects that might be interested all seem inactive, with the possible exception of WP:WikiProject Guitarists. Hmmmm.... Andrewa ( talk) 06:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guitarists#Proposed style guideline. Andrewa ( talk) 19:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music)#Proposal regarding stringed instrument tunings.
There has been a (very constructive) suggestion there that I should search for articles that might need to change as a result of the proposal, and involve those active on those articles.
I've done some of this searching already, and the proposal is largely just documenting what we end up doing anyway, see may comments at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (music)#Proposal regarding stringed instrument tunings. But agree it's time for another look, and the first I turned up was minor changes to the Lute article, see Talk:Lute#Style guideline for tunings. The Lute article is actively under development, so we might get some good input from there.
More to follow I expect. Andrewa ( talk) 04:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
See Talk:Helmholtz pitch notation#Another possible variation for another possible change to the proposal, a little more widespread in its implications. Andrewa ( talk) 18:49, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
From the discussion there: use of the apostrophe/related characters is definitely wrong. I seem from this article I used the symbol ˌ or ˌˌ for the sub-prime - not sure how valid that is. Interesting. Andrewa ( talk) 00:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Not a lot of joy at Talk:Helmholtz pitch notation. Articles which use this possible variation already include lute and mandora (both those links are permalinks to the current versions as I write, so they won't have changed even if the article in question has). I'll add any others I find. The giveaway sign is using a quote on an upper-case letter. Andrewa ( talk) 16:29, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
String gauges are almost always... perhaps always... listed as per string number.
Hmmm... curiouser and curiouser... Andrewa ( talk) 16:31, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
The main thing that still concerns me about this MOS page is that there's no explicit statement that string tunings are better described as actual pitches of indiidual strings rather than as pitch classes of strings or courses.
See http://tunings.pbworks.com/pitch-class-notation for where I'm coming from on this. Andrewa ( talk) 06:45, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
I've removed the historical tag... there seems no dipsute that this is a helpful part of the MOS, even if rarely used. Interested in other views of course! The contributor who posted the tag seems to have sought no discussion, nor have they removed the link from MOS:music. Andrewa ( talk) 06:55, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with most of the points in this proposal. It tackles a sticky topic and deals with it logically and concisely. I have just two caveats:
1) When discussing string gauges for an instrument that nearly always uses wound strings, including the "w" after every gauge seems both fussy and not conducive to easy reading. I would propose instead that if an -unwound- string comes up in that context, it simply be indicated with a "p" after the gauge number (for "plain"). This, too, is a convention that's been around for many years. In fact, when it comes to the guitar there is a "cross-over" point from gauges 0.026 to 0.018 in which one should probably -always- indicate "w" ot "p", since these gauges are apt to appear on a guitar in either form quite commonly.
2) My other caveat concerns Helmholz notation for pitch class. I say Helmholz notation should be abandoned in favor of scientific pitch notation is all modern discussions of instrument tunings. While Helmholz certainly has historical value, it is, nonetheless, a fussy, confusing, and frequently misused system. (What, for example, is one to make of C' as opposed to c', or cc as opposed to CC -- both of which I have seen, sometimes within the same text!)
By contrast, scientific notation is simple, unambiguous, and easily learned and remembered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.174.105 ( talk) 21:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:
Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages of WP:MOS?
It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica Tea? 00:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Helmholz pitch notation is fussy, ambiguous, and archaic. It is an artifact of the 19th century infancy of the science of acoustics, and has been abandoned in favor of Scientific Pitch Notation in most modern texts. While a few standard music texts (such as Piston's Orchestration) still use Helmholz notation, nearly all of these texts were written 30-50 (or more) years ago. Furthermore, there are a number of other pitch notation systems, most of them also of 19th century origin, which are similar to, yet not identical with Helmholz notation, making for additional confusion.
Scientific Pitch Notation is simple, straightforward, and unambiguous. It should be the only system used when informational material -- such as the tuning of an instrument -- is given.
Using Helmholz notation in tuning charts is akin to using Roman numerals to express string gauges. I'd like to see a consensus reached on removing the Helmholz references in this style guide, and simply explaining the Scientific Notation system, which is ubiquitous in conttemporary usage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.183.146 ( talk) 08:41, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
The main problem with (so-called) Scientific pitch notation (SPN) is that (as normally used) it looks like so many other things in related fields:
The candidates are not just SPN and Helmholtz. There are many, including but not only:
I can't see any prospect of Wikipedia adopting any one of these as its standard, for good reasons in each case. I could be wrong. Andrewa ( talk) 05:23, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
The other, perhaps even bigger, problem is that Wikipedia is not the place to advocate adoption of a worldwide standard. Rather, we use and report what other people use and report. Andrewa ( talk) 01:29, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
I changed the word "always" in this boxed section to "in general".
Rationale: these statements are generally, but not universally true for all stringed instruments. For example:
At any rate, there are enough prominent exceptions that "always" was not accurate, so I changed it to something more appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.162.249 ( talk) 04:36, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
And I've changed it back, under WP:BRD. I take the harp example as a good one, but I think it needs more discussion.
Perhaps with a very few exceptions, such as some harps? Generally is toothless. It needs to be far stronger than that. Andrewa ( talk) 00:11, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
The Listing strings in text section says that note names should be separated by dashes, yet hyphens are used in the example. Over at MOS:MUSIC#Stringed instrument tunings, en dashes are used but not described as such. Should there be spaces separating the note names from the dashes?-- Theodore Kloba ( talk) 15:53, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
I have updated hyphens to unspaced en dashes. I have also changed apostrophes to prime symbols.
An additional comment: The sub-prime symbol generated by Please see
Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music#Helmholtz pitch notation for this discussion. --
Theodore Kloba (
talk) 20:23, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
<sub><small>I</small></sub>
does not match the character used in the
Helmholtz pitch notation article, which uses Unicode U+0375, "Greek Lower Numeral Sign" (͵) created with ͵
. Is there a reason that the subscript "I" is preferred over the other option?--
Theodore Kloba (
talk) 20:20, 31 July 2017 (UTC)