User:Pfctdayelise/Music guide

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This is my collection of information to help me write articles about Australian bands, venues, industry and anything else that is in anyway connected to Category:Australian music. If you're interested in this stuff, it might help you too!

Other relevant links:

Contents

[edit] Summary of writing style guidelines

  1. From WP:MOS
  1. From Wikipedia:WikiProject Music
    • Articles for normal studio albums: Yes
    • Articles for best ofs and compilation albums: Usually no (contenious)
    • Article names: Bandname should be at Bandname, not Bandname (band) unless Bandname already exists as something else. When necessary, disambig with (band), (musician), (album), (EP) and (song) - not (Bandname album).
    • Don't link to songs unless they're significant AND you're willing to write a page for it OR a page already exists.
    • Self-titled albums: Do something like this: Bandname released Bandname in YYYY.
    • Put year in brackets after album/song mentions, if not already clear from sentence.
    • Titles of recordings: the words are capitalised if they:
      1. Are the first word in the title
      2. Are not conjunctions (and, but, or, nor), prepositions (to, over, through) or articles (an, a, the)
    • Unless you know otherwise, the word and in band names is always an ampersand (&)
    • If possible, check with an authoritative source to find if the word the is part of a band's name eg. The Beatles, but the Pixies
    • {{Infoxbox band}} hmm... if you can fill most if not all of it out, I'd say.
  1. From WP:ALBUMS
    • Add {{Albums}} to the top of the Talk page. And add it to List of albums (ugh... personally I hate this discovery)
    • Categories: An album by Bandname released in YYYY in Genre bandgenre should be placed in 3 categories: Category:Bandname albums (this is a child of Category:Albums by artist), Category:YYYY albums (child of Category:Albums by year) and Category:Bandgenre albums (child of Category:Albums by genre).
    • Template for an album page: {{Album infobox}}. See Talk page. If no cover, use Image:Nocover.gif.
    • If your band has enough articles to get its own template, check out {{Garbage}}. Pretty impressive!
    • See WP:ALBUM for more info on what to actually include. Smile (Brian Wilson album) was a featured article. Extra links on page for places to find reviews.
  1. from Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs

[edit] My to-do

[edit] Bands

[edit] FA status

Which Aussie singers/songwriters could be worked up to FA status? Paul Kelly comes to mind. Kylie Minogue has been FA. You Am I, I'd like to think. Probably no one else that I'd actually be interested in working on. :)

[edit] Venues

Start from Category:Music venues in Australia Should these article names have "the"? Probably. Check WP:MOS. Fair Go 4 Live Music?

[edit] Hierarchy of categories

Accurate as of 12 Nov 05. Emphasised ones I (should) use

Category:Australian music

Category:Australian albums
Has several subcategories in the form Category: BANDNAME albums as well as individual listings
Category:Books on Australian music (Individual listings)
Category:Classical music in Australia
Category:Australian composers
Category:Australian opera singers
Category:Australian conductors
Category:Australian orchestras
Category:Australian musical groups (Hmm.. very odd collection)
Category:AC/DC
Category:Australian heavy metal musical groups
Category:The Dissociatives (contains 2 articles!)
Category:Indigenous Australian music groups
Category:Australian music industry
Category:ARIA Music Awards
Category:Australian music festivals
Category:Australian record labels (Only 1 entry?! Hmm, this needs fixing)
Category:Australian independent record labels (Well populated, but lots to go I'm sure.)
Category:Australian music television
Category:Music venues in Australia
Category:Australian musicians
Category:Australian singers
Category:Australian jazz singers (1 entry, Renee Geyer! sheesh.)
Category:Australian opera singers (Well populated.)
Category:Australian pop singers
Category:Kylie Minogue
Category:Australian musical groups
See above for subcats. There's a self-ref going on here...
Category:Australian guitarists
Category:Indigenous Australian musicians
Category:Australian jazz musicians (Low population.)
Category:Australian jazz singers
Category:Australian pianists
Category:Australian songwriters
Category:Australian songs (Only has articles. Has songs like I Am Australian mixed in with Scar (single). Hmm.)
Category:Australian styles of music
Category:Australian Aboriginal music (5 articles, says see Category:Indigenous Australian musicians)
Category:Australian popular music
Category:ARIA Music Awards
Category:Triple J
Category:Triple J announcers
Category:Surf music (Hmm, I do question that this is belongs in Australian music. Has about a dozen articles.)
Category:Surf groups

Also relevant: Category:Australian awards.

[edit] How to contribute sample music files for a band

A guide by pfctdayelise:

  1. Read {{Music sample}} (particluarly note: SHORT, INFERIOR and NO FREE ALTERNATIVE)
  2. Read Wikipedia:Sound#Audio. Or if you use Windows, here is my summary:
    • Do you need a sound editing program? You will if your files are not already short (<30 sec) and you don't have one. (If you don't know, you probably don't have one. ;)) If so, download Audacity.
    • Do you have a program to convert files to the OGG format? This is the only acceptable format on WP for these type of files. If not, download winLAME (this is a GUI, yay).
  1. Get your file in digital format, typically mp3. If a band has a free download from their website, use that. If it's a short clip, then even better, means you spend less time editing it.
  2. Convert to OGG using winLAME or similar.
  3. Use Audacity or similar to shorten and fade out if necessary.
  4. Upload at Special:Upload. Give the file a smart name like Band - Song Title Sample. Don't choose one of the licenses from the drop-down list -- at the moment {{Music sample}} isn't on there, AFAIK -- but write it in. This is a MUST. Put in the source URL if you got it off a website. Otherwise... I guess you should put the copyright info from the album its from. Bleh.
  5. Linky link! If they're Australian, add it to Samples of music from Australia. Add it to the band page, an album/EP/single/song page, if it exists. (But I wouldn't create a song page just for that, unless it's a seminal song that really should have one.) Was the song nominated for any awards? Consider adding it to the awards page too.
    • How do you link? [[Image:Filename.ogg]] gives this: Image:Filename.ogg That is, the info page. On that actual image info page, the link on the picture of a speaker leads to the actual file. Typically the URL will be something like en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images.... not a nice wikiaddress you might expect. Anyway, here are some examples of linking:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/Filename.ogg "Name of song" (YYYY)] [[Image:Filename.ogg|info]]

-->

"Name of song" (YYYY) Image:Filename.ogg

Or you can use the {{Listen}} template:

{{Listen|filename=Filename.ogg|title=Name of song|description=Insert reason for song's significance here.|format=[[Ogg]]}}

-->

You can also add this type of thing to wrap around it:

<div style="float:right; margin-left: 10px;">

... (insert |right inside at the end of the template)

</div>

but it doesn't work real well. The template doesn't naturally float right. :( This method needs improving.

These are my tips on uploading samples:

  • Even if X is your favourite band, have a sense of proportion and don't upload a sample from every one of their songs. Doing that is just going to draw attention to what you're doing and I'd say chances are they'll mostly be deleted.
  • Pick the most significant song that most accurately represents their style - their most famous one, perhaps?
  • Try to pick something they wrote themselves rather than a cover, that would probably be nice
  • As I said above, check their official website for samples. Otherwise burn an mp3 from of your CDs then convert it, but that's more of a hassle.
  • Any other tips or Qs, drop me a line.
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