The Practice Room

12:16 AM

@Patrx2 @Dom I used a music player program to select 10 random tracks from a media collection on a family member's computer (the collection itself, of course, is not random)

By using google image search and musicnotes, I did find scores for three:

Frank Sinatra - My kind of Town
Chopin - Prelude in C Sharp Minor, Op. 45
Iggy Pop - Gimme Danger

But I couldn't find scores for

Rage Against The Machine - Snakecharmer
Bert Jansch - Peregrinations
Ken ishii - Extra
Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon
Tom Waits - When You Ain't Got Nobody

Dom

1:33 AM

@topomorto Snakecharmer is in this :

amazon.com/Rage-Against-Machine-Empire-Guitar/dp/0793567572

Don't get me wrong it's not all online or free, but that's not the point.

The transcriptions exist and can be obtained rather easily.

Patrx2

1:57 AM

Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score is published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, for instance. The Prelude and Murder scenes are fairly easy to find in piano transcriptions, but I'd imagine you'd have to go to the publisher to get a short score of the whole thing. Finding the publisher and ordering used to be the normal state of affairs. (I recall quite a wait for Koechlin's Paysages et marines back in the '70s. Now, it's Public Domain in my country and IMSLP has it.)

@RockinCowboy Get interested in PD or CC music then. :P :D

Rockin Cowboy

3:24 AM

@Dom @Patrx2 @topomorto The preview of the sheet music that you can purchase should at least give you a key signature that will tell you what key and what the time signature is. But if one has to purchase the sheet music because a free version is not available, I would be concerned about posting the copyrighted material on SE where now the world can get it for free. If it's already available for free - it's not SEs fault.

Patrx2

5:13 AM

@RockinCowboy A short excerpt to illustrate a point is, I believe, considered fair use. For the bulk of our questions (and answers), more than excerpt shouldn't be necessary.

Rockin Cowboy

5:59 AM

Okay - so I see that the help center has been changed to say the following is permitted:

"technical analysis of a specific, complete work, or well defined section thereof" is allowed according to the help center - revised by Dr. Rory Alsop Mayhem. So are we done with this subject or is further clarification needed on what is and what is not acceptable with regards to questions that reference a specific work?

And if further expanded illumination is needed or desired, as a guide to determining if a particular "specific work based" question is a good fit, or if guidelines need further definition, where would such guidelines reside?

topo morto

9:14 AM

@Dom @Patrx2 Earlier we were talking about the Golden Brown question and why it was off topic / not useful; I thought one point being made to me was that the answer could be found just from looking at the sheet music, which is in many cases easy to find online. I am just saying that it makes no sense to refuse all such questions on the basis that someone could just look at the notation when that notation may not exist for a non-negligible proportion of works.

Dom

9:31 AM

@topomorto Asking for a key signature or time signature regardless is transcription and not useful for anyone but the asked and as Patrx2 pointed out unless it is simple there's not really an answer.

Look at this question for a minute:

10

Q: How do I write music down from a recording?

I am a beginning piano student. I bought some sheet music to play Make Someone Happy, written by Jule Styne, and made famous by Jimmy Durante. The problem is that the sheet music starts with the words, and does not include the distinctive intro. I counted the unique sounds in the intro, and th...

This question was the bane of many member's for a while as the person wanted a transcription and we needed a canonical transcription question.

If you look at the answers, you'll notice different time and key signatures.

The difference is how people interpret the small passage.

As someone who answered that question and showed the process I can tell you just to notate took much longer then you think.

Doing this for every question that comes in will not benefit us and is not what many of us want to do.

I love answering analysis questions, but transcriptions are time consuming and unless you are thorough you will miss something that could severely affect the analysis.

Dom

9:59 AM

This is why we need notation for analysis.

topo morto

10:52 AM

@Dom Of course the question you just linked to is clearly a transcription question - the questioner is asking "How can I determine the 14 notes/chords being played in the first 8 seconds of the song? And how can I write them in sheet music?". In the "Golden Brown" question, the asker simply wants to play the song, In which case you could consider that the underlying question is more "how do I count it", so at the very least it requires a wider definition of what we mean by "transcription". If it's agreed and clearly noted somewhere publicly visible that that's what's meant, no problem. I do…

Dom

@topomorto Listen counting a song is not analysis and you can count a song multiple ways.

Trying to apply analysis rules to the question isn't appropriate.

So trying to say we should allow questions of that type because of analysis is a moot point.

They are separate topics and you've been lumping them together. What I was showing you was how transcription leads to issues.

As going off different transcriptions affects the resulting analysis.

And going directly from recordings to analysis leads to errors in analysis.

topo morto

11:07 AM

@Dom - where did I say "we should allow questions of that type because of analysis" ?

Dom

@topomorto Your first post "Why is "what time signature" more problematic than "what key", e.g. ". When you assumed them to be equal you assumed they were analysis. I've been saying this the whole time.

They're different which is what I've said throughout the discussion.

topo morto

OK yep, just asking what you were referring to (that was a while back in the conversation!)

I know you keep saying "they are different", but all questions are different (unless they have different words). and any two questions can be considered different types or the same type depending on what your classifications are. I'm simply trying to pin down what these classifications are as as a newcomer to the site I didn't think it's clear why some questions are allowed and some aren't. To some extent I understand the reasoning a little more now regarding the 'Golden Brown" question.

^ I mean unless they have *the same * words :)

Dom

11:22 AM

Like I said before transcription is the key idea. We allow analysis which is very specific.

topo morto

@Dom I'm trying not to lump issues together - in fact I think I've been at pains to separate the various strands.

@Dom I don't agree that "We allow analysis" on its own is specific enough to be friendly. I'm certain that to many people, listening to a bit of music and discerning the time signature could be seen as "analysis". There's little value here in arguing over the definitions of those words per se, but it would be good if the 'public face' of the site makes things clear.

Dom

11:37 AM

But in general no wording will be perfect and people will still ask what they want to.

Look at this question:

0

Q: Analyzing a Jazzy ending

I'm analyzing a jazzy ending and things are getting a little bit complicated. I was listening to this piece and heard the "circular" ending that starts with the first degree and ends with it. My aim is to determine the harmony degrees ( or the chords) that have been used. Here is the ending : ...

chords harmony

The title says analysis, but it's not. People will say or try and justify a question and no amount of wording will fix that.

Dom

12:24 PM

@NReilingh how's it going?

topo morto

@Dom I agree that no wording will be perfect, but we don't have to make that fact the enemy of trying to get something good. Individual words are particularly prone to be differently-interpreted, or even plain misunderstood. In this case it seems to me that the asker honestly (and somewhat reasonably) believed that he was asking about a question about "analysis", and at first glance, it doesn't look like it was explained to him why this site doesn't see it that way.

Dom

Listen transcription is the "what is this" of music and analysis is the "why is this".

Of the Jazz ending he just wanted to know the chords used in the ending which I pointed out is more transcription then analysis.

I don't expect every newcomer to the site to understand the difference between transcription and analysis, but that doesn't mean we should construct some elaborate list explaining what is analysis and what is transcription.

Rory Alsop

@topomorto and @Dom - this is the difficulty we have. I don't think we can have a single paragraph which does define this well enough, so as a mod, I expect to watch comments, flags, VTC's to see which ones need closing

if the community closes a question that is in the grey area, that's fine

if it's close on votes, but flags tip the balance, a mod will close

Dom

@RoryAlsop Which is what Partx2 and I have been saying.

Rory Alsop

12:39 PM

@Dom I agree - I was just trying to confirm that that is how we are having to approach it

Dom

12:50 PM

Sorry if it came off a little blunt, but this has almost been a full day of discussion.

Dom

2:28 PM

@MeaningfulUsername so did you get your scale book yet?

topo morto

3:25 PM

@Dom @RoryAlsop there are a couple of places in the site (apart from meta) where allowable question scope is outlined. One is in the tour music.stackexchange.com/tour - which a new user should see - but the wording there is:

Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.

Ask about...

practice & performance technique
music theory and notation, history, or composition
instrument maintenance
usage of specific music software

-----------
Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers.

Questions that need improvement may be closed until someone fixes them.

Don't ask about...

Anything not directly related to music practice, performance, composition, technique, theory, or history
Questions that are primarily opinion-based
Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

There's little there that would explain clearly why music.stackexchange.com/questions/30513/… or music.stackexchange.com/questions/29677/… are not weclome. However, if on a closed question we click on the Help Center link and then on the "Good fit for this site" link, we get music.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic which I think on the face of it does a better job of explaining the criteria you have been outlining here.

topo morto

Even if that page could be linked to a little more proactively when questions are getting close votes, the site would seem friendlier to newcomers and avoid the kind of ill-feeling seen in music.stackexchange.com/questions/29677/…

topo morto

Ideally, the tour page would reflect the on-topic page a bit better - it might even prevent some of these questions getting asked (or badly-worded) in the first place.

Patrx2

@topomorto Rory has been fleshing out the new list. The process is still underway. The list in the Help Centre has been the template for discussion - it is that recent a change.

topo morto

@Patrx2 aha, cool.

Rory Alsop

@topomorto that is the one I edited

it's an ongoing work - you guys collectively create the site scope, I can edit/act as janitor/ mediator etc

Patrx2

3:44 PM

@RoryAlsop Have we got a good consensus on the changes? To my mind, the wording in Help is pretty clear.

Rory Alsop

@Patrx2 I think that wording is pretty much agreed upon. The challenge is distilling that down to close reasons, and commentary for the tour

topo morto

@RoryAlsop Do you think there is any way that the tour page could reflect the 'on-topic' page a little better?

Patrx2

@RoryAlsop The tour commentary should probably be very similar to the Help Centre's commentary - it is laid out rather similarly. Close reasons, now... hmmm....

Rory Alsop

@topomorto how is that?

Meaningful Username

4:16 PM

@Dom Yeah, ripping through them like there's no tomorrow!

Scale exercises are more fun on the keyboard than on the guitar, for some reason.

Well, likely due to keyboard being a fairly new instrument to me, but it's definitely less work involved to get the basics down on piano.

But then it's playing different things with each hand, that stuff is hard. I can play the drums reasonably well, and have played the guitar for quite a while, so I have some limb independence, but it's still very tricky.

Just seeing the voice leading play out so nicely is pretty amazing, on guitar that involves some work...

topo morto

@RoryAlsop e.g. the 'Get answers to practical, detailed questions' bullets miss out the 'identifying notes/chords/metres in your favourite song' bit in on-topic

mey

6:10 PM

@yo' @Dom changing keys every 2 bars (or few bars) is also what my hubby loves to do ☺ His record is: 9 key changes in a 60 bar song ☺

From C to F, back to C, then F again, C, F and C again, then Bb, and after 8 bars or so, he went to A, and lastly B.

Ends with G#m chord, however. So i should call it the key of G# minor rather than B.

Sadly, there is no scholarship for this non-musician composer. Lol.
@RoryAlsop

yo'

6:34 PM

@mey well, in this Tiersenn's it's not really key change, it's just switching two chords back and forth all the time :D

Yann Tiersen ~ L'Autre Valse d'Amélie

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