Talk:Space music

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[edit] Archived discussions

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Archive 1 (March 2007)


This page was archived on July 28, 2007 to /Archive 1, due to the page exceeding 200 KB. All comments prior to June 2007 were archived. There were no comments here between the end of March 2007 and the entries below, however the archived page contains earlier comments directly relating to the current debates. Interested editors are welcome to review the archived pages for complete context. --Parzival418 Hello 11:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Definitions - again

The definition of spacemusic has not changed in the past few months. It is still a term which is applied to certain types of ambient music, and there is still no such thing as spacemusic which is not also ambient. Please ensure that any changes to this article reflect the commonly accepted definition of the term, as confirmed in verifiable third party sources - not peculiar POV definitions that do not reflect reality. --Gene_poole 10:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, the definition has not changed in the past few months. Time passing without activity does not imply consensus. That's why I made the edits yesterday. I expected you would revert them. My purpose was to post a reminder that this topic does not yet have consensus.
While you state that your viewpoint is commonly accepted and others' opinions are "peculiar," that does not make it so.
"commonly accepted definition of the term, as confirmed in verifiable third party sources"... yet your reversion removed several verifiable third party references, leaving the article with only one reference with only a weak implication and not a solid support of the definition you propose. Even that reference needed to be selectively edited by whoever posted it to make the point - comments from two different paragraphs in the source essay were juxtaposed to create the quote.
If as you say, yours is a commonly accepted definition, then why has it been so hard to find multiple reliable sources supporting that definition? Why after such a long article history is there still not more than one reference? Has no-one been able to find more writers describing the viewpoint you present as fact?
"no such thing as spacemusic which is not also ambient". What about these artists that are listed in the Space Music article based on their inclusion in the Hearts of Space playlist?: Geoerge Winston, Carlos Nakai, Lisa Gerard, Ray Lynch, Paul Horn, Jean Michel Jarre, Mark Isham, Kitaro, and others. Those artists make music that has melody, harmony, rhythm and movement, all qualities that do not apply to true Ambient music as defined by Brian Eno and others after him.
I'm not undoing your reversion at this time. I'm not interested in an edit war. I am interested in finding consensus for an NPOV article. I felt it important to make the edits to keep the topic open, to indicate that consensus does not exist on this article as it now stands. --Parzival418 Hello 18:54, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

"10:34, 25 June 2007 Gene Poole (revert unverifiable POV per talk discussions)" You appear to have removed solidly sourced statements, and sourced statements refute your edit summary claim of "unverifiable POV". It appears that you have a commercial conflict of interest with the sourced statements, and as such, the POV is yours.
I also agree that the current sourced statement which you have restored is an invalidly-referenced fabrication; space music is certainly not "ambient electronics".
• I'll give you a reasonable period of time to determine which statements are not sourced, and I expect you to post them here for a consensus discussion, statement by statement.
• If you do nothing, I will restore all of Parzival418's text.
• If you repeat your previous behavior, you will revert the restoration one or more times.
• Following that, an RFC/User Conduct will be filed on you, wherein you will be charged with sourced-removal vandalism and commercial conflict of interest.
• In that RFC, I expect that you will enter the contents of the draft RFC that you prepared against imaginary sockpuppets of myself and Parzival418. I encourage you to enter that information, because the more you write in an RFC, the worse you look. It will at least make other editors roll their eyes upward, and maybe laugh out loud as I did. Milo 20:45, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Do not attempt to restore a version of this article that is unsupported by either reliable third party references or consensus. Please note that 3 people misquoting sources and/or promoting the same original research does not constitute consensus - it constitutes vandalism and will be reported as such. --Gene_poole 02:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
• You are no longer dealing with amateurs that you can bluff. You know the rules, and you will follow them.
• State your objections line-by-line for a consensus discussion. Failure to do so in a reasonable period of time will result in a restoration of all text lines which you do not discuss. You will have to prove the existence of original research. If your claimed original-research statements are actually validly-sourced, they will be restored.
• If you revert the restored text without a talk page consensus discussion, such action will result in an RFC/U filed on you.
• If you don't reform after an RFC/U, then you may have to face a community ban hearing. If that happens, your long, long record as a tendentious, uncooperative, disruptive, minimal-trolling editor motivated by commercial conflict of interest, will go hard on you. The many, many editors that you have mistreated and offended over the years will testify how much they want to see you departed from Wikipedia.
• Stop complaining and start working. If you cooperate here, your valid claims will be treated fairly. If your claims are valid, you have a lot of work to do to prove it, since you will have to read, take quotes, and logically comment on every single one of Parzival418's sentences as compared to his references. Any sentence you don't consensus discuss will be restored as is.
• Stick to the facts. Anything you write that is your mere unreferenced opinion, or bluster like your last post, will be ignored — so don't waste your time composing it. Milo 06:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
I strongly suggest that you limit your contributions here to comments relating to article content, and ask that you stop posting uprovoked threats and personal attacks like those above. I am no longer prepared to tolerate this sort of behaviour from you or any other editor, and accordingly I will shortly be bringing your comments to the attention of a third party admin, and will let him deal with you in the appropriate manner. Please note that there will be no further response from me to any further uncivil comments posted by you, here or anywhere else. --Gene_poole 06:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
The clock is ticking on your removal of sourced statements. Either put them back or bring them to the talk page for consensus discussion. You have been instructed as to what will happen after that.
I am very familiar with your intimidation boilerplate. You use it every time you break the rules in an attempt to evade punishment. I'm unconcerned with the admin attention thing, since I saw that an admin ignored you the last time you tried to do that.
Whew, the idea that you ever previously were "prepared to tolerate this sort of behaviour from you or any other editor" caused me to break out laughing when I was trying to be very serious with you. I've read your cussout rants, and you were never, ever prepared to civilly tolerate anybody that had the slightest disagreement with you. Milo 10:29, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppet use

Contributors should note that the creation of sockpuppet accounts to attempt to vandalise articles and evade the WP:3RR is an abuse of WP's acceptable use policies, and will be reported. --Gene_poole 23:40, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Gene, your concern is duly noted. --Parzival418 Hello 10:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non-electronic Space music

For the time being I have removed the Electronic music project tag to avoid possibly piling on a new set of contentions and POVs from promoters of electronic genres, which space music is not. If consensus is otherwise found here, then I'm willing to educate the electronic music folks about the primacy of space music sound imagery over electronics. Maybe there will be no problem, but right now is the wrong timing to find out.

Space music contains substantial non-electronic content. Here is a list that I hopefully recall correctly, taken only from the article notables list, and there are others such as Liz Story (piano), Coyote Oldman (flutes, drums), and Tim Story (partial piano).

Milo 01:47, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I have replied to your unjustified removal of the electronic music project tag here, and I have offered reasons and evidence for its inclusion. As such, I have added the tag back into the article. Unless you can provide actual reasons why the tag should not be added to the article, your personal opinion does not hold much weight. Just as acoustic rock music is a subset of rock music so is acoustic space music and electronic space music a subset of space music. You can continue saying things about "educating" editors, but the fact is, you haven't offered the slightest bit of evidence, whereas I have shown, using reliable sources, that space music is considered a genre of electronic music. That there are forms of space music that are not electronic is not unusual in any way. The project tags are not meant to be used to classify an article; they are used to bring in project members to work on related articles. What's even more interesting, is that the article by Don Knabb that you and others are using in the RFC to justify your dispute states quite clearly, "Although space music could be created with acoustic instruments, that would be the exception."[1] You may want to read the articles you are using to defend your ideas. —Viriditas | Talk 07:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
"...Stephen Hill's program "Music From the Hearts of Space", which had been airing out of nearby Berkeley since 1973, began promoting a similar kind of music, although his favorite musicians employed electronic keyboards rather than acoustic instruments. Here the main influence was "minimalism", the avantgarde music invented by the likes of LaMonte Young and Terry Riley, which was both spiritual and keyboard-based. Riley's Rainbow In Curved Air (1968) was the progenitor of all melodic electronic suites, and Young's stationary music was the progenitor of ambient music. The second main influence on electronic new-age music was "kosmische musik", which soon became more important in practical terms. Hill's proteges merely adapted the format of the "cosmic couriers" to a more contemplative and spiritual mood, removing the drama and enhancing the ambience. Needless to say, these musicians learned from the lessons of the early electronic musicians, the likes of Walter Carlos, Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis. New-age music was born near the Silicon Valley, the place where electronic keyboards abounded, a natural meeting point of the counterculture and high-tech. In 1982 Sequential Circuits introduces the "Prophet 600", the first keyboard enabled with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), a system to connect music instruments to computers, which in 1983 could be connected to a Roland's "JX-3P", the first time that two MIDI instruments were connected. In 1983 Yamaha introduced the DX-7, the first synthesizer to be sold by the hundreds of thousands. The number of electronic musicians rapidly multiplied during the 1980s."[2] —Viriditas | Talk 14:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[Milo, I moved your signature to here from below the list, since the list has now been expanded. Hope you don't mind. If you don't approve of my changes, please change it however you prefer. --Parzival418 Hello 05:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC)]

Good idea, using a list to illustrate the variety... I've added a few more artists to the list.
Other editors are invited to expand this section further. Mostly I think the choices are pretty clear, but if anyone doesn't agree with which section of the list an artist appears, move it to the other section. If you consider that artist not to fit under acoustic at all, please use strike it out rather than deleting; adding a comment below would be helpful. Thanks. --Parzival418 Hello 05:41, 1 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Acoustic Space musicians

  • Andreas Vollenweider - harp
  • George Winston - piano
  • Peter Michael Hamel - pipe organ
  • Carlos Nakai - flute
  • David Hykes - choir
  • David Darling - cellist
  • Paul Horn - wind instruments
  • Lisa Gerrard - vocalist
  • Paul Winter - Saxophone

[edit] Partly acoustic Space musicians

  • Deuter - flute, esoteric instruments
  • Kitaro - Japanese drums
  • Mark Isham - trumpet, penny whistle, reeds, snare drums, percussion, piano, synthesizers
  • Sun Ra - variety of jazz instruments
  • Popol Vuh - full band plus synthesizers
  • Laraaji - acoustic zither with electronic processing
  • Mychael Danna - ethnic instrumentsand orchestra with electronic minimalism
  • Constance Demby - hammered dulcimer, cello, vocals, custom acoustic instruments and synthesizers

[edit] Hearts of Space Playlist Genres - Electronic and Acoustic

Listed below are the genres found at the Hearts of Space website under the genre tab on the main page. (we don't have a direct page link because they use flash or frames or something).

Electronic space music

Electronic Space, Ambient/Downtempo, Ethno/Ambient

Acoustic or partially acoustic space music - Regional or national

African/Sub-Saharan, Celtic, Japanese, Scandinavian/Arctic, Central Asian, Latin American, Southeast Asian/Indonesian, Chinese, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern/North African, Spanish/Moorish, Tibetan, Native American, World Fusion, East Indian

Acoustic or partially acoustic space music - Western

Contemporary Instrumental, New Vocal, Holiday, Miscellaneous/Eclectic, Space Jazz, Sacred/Choral, Guitar, Piano, Orchestral/Chamber


...Interesting... --Parzival418 Hello 09:08, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Electronic Space Music

[Re-editing - adding section divider to keep the discussion threads clear.] --Parzival418 Hello 04:18, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of electronic music project tag

I don't see how the addition of the electronic music project tag could be contentious or POV or exclude non-electronic elements. Space music has a strong electronic component, and the Hearts of Space website devotes a full archive[3] to "Electronic Space" music.[4] Thomas B. Holmes 2002 book, Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in Technology and Composition,[5] describes "space music" as a genre of electronic music. Holmes depicts electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen's 113 minute Hymnen (Anthems, 1966-67) as "one of the few authentic electronic masterworks...that launched an entire generation of imitators of what might be called electronic space music". Homes goes on to say that Hymnen is the "Pet Sounds of electronic music" representing the "pinnacle of classic tape composition technique". More importantly, Stockhausen's electronic pièce de résistance "elevated the stature of electronic music" and in the 1970s, influenced a "younger generation of German musicians...that spawned "space music", popularized by Can, Klaus Schulze, and Tangerine Dream". I'm adding the electronic music project tag back in because electronic music is an essential historical foundation and influence on space music. —Viriditas | Talk 02:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

"I don't see how the addition of the electronic music project tag could be contentious or POV or exclude non-electronic elements." Because Space music is frequently claimed to be a form of electronic music by people who know little about it. I didn't say it could never be added, I said not right now (when we are in the middle of an RFC). Add it as a need to the RFC if you like, and we can all decide about doing this or not.
I'm quite concerned about your claim of RFC neutrality when you put the tag back without even waiting for the completion of this talk page debate. Worse, you are currently in formal violation of WP:Consensus. I'll AGF assume that you didn't realize this, so I'll give you a chance to correct your violation. Please remove the tag until we complete the debate. Milo 03:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I've been working with WikiProjects for years on Wikipedia. I've never encountered anyone who has edit warred over a project tag before, especially in a situation like this where it is clearly non-controversial and appropriate. I would suggest you recuse yourself from this topic since you are currently involved in an RFC, and you don't want to give the impression that you are edit warring or POV pushing. The project tag has absolutely nothing to do with the current RFC that you are a part of, and is meant to bring in members from that project to help improve this article. And, as I have shown above, this tag is justified. Your statement, "space music is frequently claimed to be a form of electronic music by people who know little about it" doesn't seem to address this issue in any way and only serves to illustrate your strong POV. Please provide references that dispute the classification of space music as a genre of electronic music. —Viriditas | Talk 03:27, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
"I've never encountered anyone who has edit warred over a project tag before" It sounds like you are accusing me of edit warring. Perhaps you should make it clear that you don't really think that happened during a normal bold, revert, discuss cycle. Milo 03:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
You removed a project tag without any reason or evidence other than your own personal opinion. —Viriditas | Talk 06:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Milo, space music should not be part of the electronic music project, at least for now, until and unless we attain consensus on that point. I have removed the tag. I respectfully request that it not be re-added, so we don't waste time on this minor point.
I am not saying it can't be there eventually. But putting it on now strongly implies that there is a consensus here about space music being part of electronic music, and that is not so. The tag can bias the RFC, so it should not be placed on the page until the RFC is complete. The only other solution would be to post a bunch of other music project tags too, like New age music, world music, instrumental music, or whatever. There are many kinds of music that overlap with space music. Thats actually the main question of the whole RFC anyway, isn't it? --Parzival418 Hello 03:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Space music is as much a part of electronic music as acoustic rock is a part of rock music. I don't see any reasons or evidence offered for removing the tag, whereas I have offered reasons and evidence for adding it. Many articles have multiple project tags; the existence of the electronic music tag does not imply anything other than a knowledgeable group of editors associated with a particular WikiProject working on improving the article. That you and Milo are inferring that the project tag means something other than what it says is troublesome. New age music currently belongs to WikiProject music and WikiProject Music genres; World music belongs to WikiProject Regional and national music; and Instrumental music belongs to WikiProject songs. The only relevant project from these articles that you mention is WikiProject music. The facts are pretty clear; the addition of WikiProject Electronic music is supported by reliable sources, while the removal of the project tag is not. —Viriditas | Talk 06:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Hill's own website states that, space music can be, "A timeless experience...as ancient as the echoes of a simple bamboo flute or as contemporary as the latest ambient electronica....from abstract electronic soundworlds to the romantic grandeur of orchestral soundtracks...What's now being called Ambient music is the latest chapter in the contemplative music experience. Electronic instruments have created new expressive possibilities, but the coordinates of that expression remain the same. Space-creating sound is the medium. Moving, significant music is the goal."[6] —Viriditas | Talk 07:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I can see the value of attracting editors to improve the page by joining the project. But as Stephen Hill puts it "contemplative music, broadly defined". Check out the list of genres from the HoS website that I added in a separate section. There's lots of space music that is regional/national music listed there. Maybe the tag for WikiProject Regional and national music would be good too. I'm not going to add it right now because I don't want it to be a reaction to the one you added (and as I said, I'm not going to remove the other one). But I'd like you to add the second project tag. If you don't, maybe I will add it in a few days, I don't know. It would be better if you did it, to keep the boundaries clear. With that project added, we'll attract editors from more than just the electronic project. More editors would be better. After all, as you pointed out... Hill includes "as ancient as the echoes of a simple bamboo flute", so let's have some project editors come here who are familiar with that kind of music too. --Parzival418 Hello 09:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, WikiProject Regional and national music only relates to geographic areas and people, such as Music of Hawaii, Jewish music, etc...read their scope on the project page. —Viriditas | Talk 12:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] references specifically about "electronic space music"

Viriditas - Aside from the issue of the electronic music project tag I replied to above, I wanted to mention that your comment and references contains some interesting ideas. I'm not automatically brushing off those ideas due to the project tag issue. Actually, they have stimulated some thoughts about the article I would like to share. I can't do it at this time, but I wanted to post this note to balance my prior comment so it can be clear that I see this as a collaboration and not a constant dispute. I will return when I can to discuss the points that those references brought up for me, meanwhile, thanks for digging them up, that information seems valuable. --Parzival418 Hello 04:12, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

That's fine, but your removal of the electronic music project tag is not justified. Furthermore, in the past, Milo has supported the statement that space music was, "formerly associated as a sub-category of other music genres from which it emerged — Jazz Fusion music, Electronic music, New Age music, and Ambient music", so the removal of the project tag does not make any sense nor is it justified by reason or evidence.[7] —Viriditas | Talk 06:54, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing this out. I did write that, but before I found that ambient dated from 1978, so space music could not have emerged from ambient. I also don't have any dates for the other genres, so that sentence may have to be further revised. Milo 09:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I started this new section to discuss your references which are interesting. I'll try to get to that tomorrow. The tag discussion is happening in the other section. I'll reply in that section when I have a chance. If you want to leave your comment here, that's fine, or you could move it to the other section where it would be more in the thread. That's up to you. I just think it's confusing to have that same discussion in two places at once. In any case, I still don't agree about the electronic music project template, I think it's not correct for this genre. But I'm not going to remove the template, I'll leave it on the page for now. --Parzival418 Hello 09:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Parzival, do you work with WikiProjects at all? The tag does not imply that this article is merely a genre of electronic music, but that the electronic music project is related in some way to this article and can help improve it. This is well established in the sources. The tag classifies the article in administrative and maintenance categories that are watchlisted by project members who can then help improve the article, contribute to discussion, remove vandalism, etc... —Viriditas | Talk 12:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
This is typical of the pattern of behaviour of the above editor. There is little or no consistency in any of his arguments over time, and when he does finally come up with a couple of references (after 3 months), they're either selectively mis-quoted, or actually saying something different from what he thinks they say. The electronic project tag belongs in this article, because that's primarily what space music is. What does need to be severely pruned is the list of artists, which currently contains such bizarre inclusions as George Winston (actually a New Age / Contemporary Instrumental artist), Lisa Gerrard (ethnic-influenced tribal ambient artist), Kitaro (New Age), Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream (Berlin school electronic), Brian Eno (ambient), Carlos Nakai (New Age), Mike Oldfield (WTF ?????). --Gene_poole 08:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Gene_poole, please stop insulting me in your comments, no-one is interested in that stuff. Stick to the topic of the article.
Regarding selectively misquoting references,... WP:KETTLE.
Regarding the list of artists, I didn't add any of the ones you listed, though I do know of references that support their inclusion. Maybe after another three months I'll find the references and supply them for your approval. Wikipedia is not in a hurry. --Parzival418 Hello 10:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Parzival, Gene is right about the lists; see Wikipedia:Embedded list. And Gene, Parzival is right about the insults, let's keep those off the page and stick to the topic. —Viriditas | Talk 11:07, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notable artists list

It's fine with me to split off the list into a separate "list" article, and/or move some of the more notable artists into a prose section as in the link you noted. As I mentioned, I didn't start the list and most of the listed artists were not placed there by me. Tonight I did add several artists, but I also removed some so the total didn't grow (that's a guess, I didn't count them). We should temporarily keep the list though, for a short while, as we work on making it into prose or splitting it off. The artists show the range of the genre and many of the artists are now referenced. When we turn the list into prose, we'll probably remove lots of the artists, so adding a separate list-style article is a good idea. We should also add a history section into this article to show how the evolution of the use of the term, which actually pre-dates the Hearts of Space use by almost 20 years, maybe more, I'm still checking on that. Since the list has been in the article for a long time, there is no hurry to remove it. Until the article has more content, the list is valuable. As soon as we improve the content of the article so it's not just a couple paragraphs, I agree about removing the list that remains. Does that sound like a good plan? --Parzival418 Hello 12:12, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Works for me, but I wouldn't mind if someone was bold about making changes. —Viriditas | Talk 12:16, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Readers have contributed to the notables list more than any other part of the article, and as well, here's a technical reason why the list should stay here with it: WP:LC "The list should originate as a section within that article, and should not be broken out into a separate article until it becomes so long as to be disproportionate to the rest of the article." We all have personal opinions and classifications based on listening and artist reviews here or there, and one opinion is no better than another. That's why I began occasionally selecting or deselecting artists from the article list, based on a standard reference for spacemusic — the Hearts of Space playlist server. While there are artists now listed that I did not check, many of the artists mentioned I have verified as notable by the significant number of times they have been played on Hearts of Space. I didn't look for a cutoff number, just a bunch of hits.I have also not been aggressive about editing this list. The readers enjoy posting their favorites, and I can't immediately be certain what artists might be notable in space music album sales, who haven't yet been played much on HoS but might be. Gene's list of "bizzare inclusions", (George Winston, Lisa Gerrard, Kitaro, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Carlos Nakai, Mike Oldfield) is evidence that spacemusic is not entirely what he thinks it is, because it has artists that he doesn't understand/agree how they fit in. But they do fit if filtered by the HoS segue mix formula. When I say spacemusic is not what he thinks it is, I mean that those artists he lists as bizzare inclusions are in the HoS playlist server, and some of them are/were very popular on the HoS show. Now Gene can say he doesn't agree with HoS's playlist, but then he considers HoS to be his competitor, so his opinion of HoS is to be WP:COI-discounted for deciding what space music is or isn't based on any choice of producers' playlists. And how do I know they do fit? Aside from the fact that I can hear it, it's because of the great success of Hearts of Space — and one can't argue with success. Gene can't have it both ways. If Space music equals ambient, then those artists belong on the list. On the other hand, if the artists he names don't fit well into ambient music, but nonetheless fit to the known great success of HoS programming, that's evidence that Space music is a separate genre. Milo 09:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
WP:LC is an essay, not a guideline nor a policy, and as such, holds no weight whatsoever. The guideline, Wikipedia:Embedded list covers this issue; we need prose in an article about the topic, not a list. I'm getting the sense from comments made by Milo and others that people either don't understand the concept of disambiguation or don't know how to implement it. It's starting to look like we need a separate article entitled Spacemusic. —Viriditas | Talk 11:18, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
"The list should originate as a section within that article, and should not be broken out into a separate article until it becomes so long as to be disproportionate to the rest of the article." The article has progressed since you last read it. It now contains a proper definition of the term "space music", as supported by numerous third party sources, a description of the music's particular characteristics, and a primary source statement from Stephen Hill himself. Please note that "spacemusic is any music ever played on the Hearts of Space radio show" is not part of the abovementioned definition, as there are no sources which support that contention - and that includes Hearts of Space itself. On the contrary, the Hearts of Space website describes the show thus:From abstract electronic soundworlds to orchestral soundtracks, classical adagios to delicate jazz improvisations, traditional ethnic and religious music to ambient atmospherics — Hearts of Space ranges across the music of thousands of artists to create spatial/ambient experiences of quality and depth --Gene_poole 10:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
"spacemusic is any music ever played on the Hearts of Space radio show" Yes, that works. Based on the genre founders' selection characteristics for the genre, that's true by logic: they wouldn't play it if it wasn't spacemusic. I think there's a way to put that in the article. Plus other music that has the required characteristics, that has not been played on HOS. "proper definition" The very first statement is still a reference fabrication if based on "[1]" ("ambient electronics" is not music), and "[2]", or "[3]" don't support such a strong statement. Here's a quote which appears as valid as Barde's view "[8]", and appears on the same server: "From what I gather ambient now is almost as coopted a term as "new age" or "progressive", "electronic" or "fusion" has come to be - a catch-all that is so generally sweeping and yet personally su[b]jective that it's now almost as meaningless as "alternative"." -- Malcolm Humes What Is Ambient Music? Milo 11:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Please see this article. Do you support a separate article entitled Spacemusic? Sun Ra's "space music" jazz has nothing to do with this topic. —Viriditas | Talk
I did read that article - I think you linked it on another page. I considered the idea of a separate Spacemusic article as you're suggesting. I'm not sure about it and I am continuing to consider. It might be helpful, but mostly it would only change the history section since Sun Ra is in the past. Plus, Sun Ra's use of the term may have affected what came later, is it up to us to decide if Stephen Hill or anyone else was or was not affected by that? We don't have that information, so we should not assume they are not connected in some way, we should just report the usage. The main reason I've not suggested going ahead with that idea is that even if we split off a Spacemusic page, we would still have the main disagreement about if all spacemusic is ambient. Some people say it is all ambient, but plenty sources say not. In my claims and statement sections of the RFC I showed specific examples and references. So even if we split the page, that problem won't go away. I've found some additional current mainstream references that categorize the genres differently that I will bring soon when I have time to format them. Since these are reliable sources, at some point they'll need to be included, even if we split the article. So for now, I feel it should stay as one article. Splitting it would make the whole thing more complicated - multiple pages to watch and discussions in more than one place too. --Parzival418 Hello 12:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Let's try and keep our comments brief and in one paragraph. Sun Ra has nothing to do with this article; please do the research. His space music merely shares the same name, as do others. We also need to differentiate space music from other genres, like space rock, which can also be described as ambient. Disambiguation solves most problems: when you split spacemusic off to its own article, it will have to be defined in the terms used by secondary sources like Steve Sande, who describes spacemusic as ambient (as does writer Joe Brown[8]) Ben Kettlewell, L. A. Herberlein, and many others. I have yet to see a single reliable source that claims that spacemusic cannot be classified as ambient music. Can you provide one? —Viriditas | Talk 12:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not going to re-argue everything I've been arguing all along in this space about the DAB. There are several references in my RFC notes with people saying it't not just ambient. It can be ambient, that's just not all it is. I also answered eslewhere about the Sun Ra thing and about the DAB and additional references. Im sure you'll find it easily, it was in response to your other coments just now. This posting in multiple threads is not effective. Please read my other replies. Thanks. --Parzival418 Hello 14:11, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I still don't see a connection between the space music of Sun Ra and the spacemusic of HoS. In fact, if one were to make a connection, then it would be to observe that the use of "space" to describe music, such as rock, is a reference to the ambient nature of that genre. The article on space rock makes this clear. I personally agree with you that space music is not just ambient, however the spacemusic genre of HoS is primarily ambient electronica. This is why a DAB page may be necessary. —Viriditas | Talk 01:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Yesterday, you agreed you would wait a few days and let me show you the new material I'm organizing, before continuing to discuss the DAB idea. I agreed that if after that you still wanted to do a DAB, I would be open to discussing it. I'm not saying Sun Ra would be played on HoS today, that probably won't happen (though it is conceivable, they've even played David Bowie, Porcupine Tree, and Coldplay!) . But Sun Ra invented the term "Space Music" so even if his music is not played on HoS, he should be acknowledged in the history section. Radio producer John Dilaberto of Echoes who also speciallizes in spacemusic did a half-hour documentary on Sun Ra on his show, so that's another connection (I'll post the reference later). And, HoS played the Grateful Dead's Infrared Roses album on one of their shows. I'm not saying those groups are "Spacemusic" in the way we think of it now, just that they are part of the evolution of the term. Aside from all that though, DAB or not, spacemusic as a term needs to be described differently than it is in the article right now. That will not change even if we make several other pages with that title. As I said yesterday, I have a new approach and some new references that are not like the ones we've been using so far. I'll put them together soon, then we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, please give me some slack to work on the content without thinking about the DAB. We can split the page later if you and the others don't think it makes sense all as one. I don't think that's needed, but it's not a big deal to me. It would not change the fundamental issue we are addressing, and there's no reason for us to hurry about it. I'm not saying I'm totally against DAB, just that it's too soon, let's see how the situation looks after some more content is added. OK? --Parzival418 Hello 08:03, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
There's no formal agreement on anything. Whenever you are ready to update the page, please do so, but there is nothing wrong with continuing to discuss the issue. If you are organizing the material, surely you can discuss your organization. As for Sun Ra and HoS, the term "space" is merely used to imply ambience. If Sun Ra invented the term, that should be easy to source. Again, there is no impediment to continued discussion; if I felt the need, I would go ahead and rewrite the article with my own sources, avoiding the dab issue by splitting each particular type of space music off into its own subarticle. —Viriditas | Talk 02:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
You're right, there's no formal agreement. I did not mean to say there was. I just meant that I asked you to wait on the DAB topic and you said OK. I thought it was casual, but I thought you said OK. I guess I misread your comment. If Sun Ra invented the term, that should be easy to source. - It's not possible to source who was the first to use a term, only when a term was used by someone. There's no way to prove it was not used earlier than that. Sun Ra used the term in 1956 to describe his own music; Norman Mailer reported it and it was written in his biography. Maybe someone else used it before that, I don't know, but Sun Ra is certainly important to the lineage. John Dilaberto agrees - he produced a 30 minute documentary about Sun Ra for Echoes radio in 1980. --Parzival418 Hello 03:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
It's certainly possible to source these types of things; I do it all the time in other articles. Etymological history has a lot of supporting sources. As for Dilaberto, do you have a link for me? —Viriditas | Talk 03:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
If you can source a negative, ie that it was not used before Sun Ra, that would be interesting. I'd have no idea how to do that. Regarding the Dilaberto show, I don't have a link, I just know about it because I heard the re-run, around a year ago. I'll see if I can find the link, if I can, I'll post it here. --Parzival418 Hello 04:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
We don't have to source a negative. Have you ever worked on any etymologies? We would need some kind of link to Dilaberto, such as a primary or secondary source to keep discussing it. —Viriditas | Talk 04:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't have experience researching etymology, other than looking up sources of regular words. Constructed words like "space music" I'd have no idea how to show that "no-one used it before a certain date." If you know how to do that, it would be interesting to see it. As far as the Dilaberto/Sun Ra connection, we don't need to keep discussing it, I just mentioned it in passing. Maybe I'll find the source later; that's not my focus for now. --Parzival418 Hello 05:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notable artists list (section break for convenience)

(outdent) Gene_poole wrote: It now contains a proper definition of the term "space music", as supported by numerous third party sources. Yes, three references are listed to support that version of the definition. But: other reliable sources exist that use different definintions, and two of the very same references used by Gene_poole themselves contracdict that version in their writings:

  • Stephen Hill: "The genre spans historical, ethnic, and contemporary styles."
  • Stephen Hill: "spacemusic is found within many historical, ethnic, and contemporary genres."
  • Lloyde Barde:"new age, neo-classical, space, electronic, ambient, progressive, jazzy, tribal, world, folk, ensemble, acoustic, meditative, and back to new age...Each 'type' has its own history, its own cornerstones and 'hall of fame' artists and titles."

Beyond that, Hill goes out of his way not to limit his definition by using as the tag line for his Radio show the phrase "Contemplative music, broadly defined" That phrase also appears in the summary or introduction sections of many of his writings, including the ones linked above. The links to those quotes are listed here in the intro of the RFC. The definition as it is in the article now does not have consensus and is not NPOV. It's only one definition among several that do not conform with each other, yet are all used by reliable sources. That's the specific reason for the RFC. In summary, I do not contend that Gene_poole's definition is incorrect. Rather, it is one of several defintions that are not all the same; that have been used by reliable sources; and so must be acknowledged in the article to avoid non-neutral POV. Regarding the list, I do not think it should be split off. I added the split-off template to the article, to show willingness to discuss the point that Viriditas brought up when he showed me the list policies. I'm not hard-set against the idea, but for now I don't think it's the best choice. I've looked at other list articles and the lists are very long - often spanning multiple pages with various organization schemes. This list is only a partial page. And: until we have better definitions and more prose in the article, the list is valuable to illustrate for reader what music has been considered space music over time. Since the list is valuable to the article, it should stay for now. Over time if the list grows and as we incorporate the most important artists into the text, eventually it could be split off at that time. --Parzival418 Hello 19:17, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

No, this is a prose article, not a list. —Viriditas | Talk 11:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Further regarding the list: I just noticed that the Ambient music article has a much longer list here. It includes the most notable Ambient artists, but then there is also a separate list article that has even more of the artists listed because there are so many. --Parzival418 Hello 19:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

The ambient list can be verified with multiple reliable sources. The current list in this article cannot, nor is it accurate. I support listing the most notable, verifiable artists. —Viriditas | Talk 11:28, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
It may be possible that the ambient list "can be verified with multiple reliable sources", but as it is in that article now, those sources are not in place. Why is that OK, but on this article it's not OK? Also, I see that in the ambient list they include Miles Davis and Pink Floyd. Why are those OK on that list, but you questioned Sun Ra on this list? Also, many of the artists on the list here do have references. When you say the list is not accurate, what you are you basing that statement on? (not being argumentative, just asking... ) One thing I think could help would be if we changed this list to look like the one in the ambient article, and included specific albums instead of just artist names, artists change from album to album - some may be space music while others are not,e ven for the same artist. --Parzival418 Hello 12:21, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you, the entire list should be questioned. Miles Davis and Pink Floyd should be removed. Floyd is classified as space rock. Struck out my comments. I thought we were talking about this article. Please focus on this article. If you have concerns with ambient music, then take them to the talk page on that article. We most certainly do not want to duplicate unsourced lists. —Viriditas | Talk 12:37, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Please don't remove my dabneeded tag. I've presented my reasoning for the tag in two separate sections. I don't agree with the neutrality tag, but you don't see me removing it as I respect the opinion of the editors who added it. Please show me the same courtesy. —Viriditas | Talk 12:40, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about removing the tag, you're right, it would have been better to discuss it first. I removed it because no-one agreed with our reasoning, I thought you were just discussing it, not getting ready to do it. I think DAB would be a mistake. The history of the term is part of its heritage. Anyway... I've replied elsewhere to your further comments about this. --Parzival418 Hello 14:11, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I have no strong feelings either way, but there are multiple definitions and usage for "space music". Unless one can show that the space music of Sun Ra is related to the spacemusic of HoS, it would be OR to make that claim. —Viriditas | Talk 01:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not making a jump to "OR" on that, I'm not saying Sun Ra would be played on HoS today. This thread is confusing though, it's in two places at once. So I replied some more, a few paragraphs above here - where you entered your other comment right after you wrote this one. Can we please keep this DAB discussion in that one place so we don;t have to skip around? Most of it was up there (several paragraphs up from here, above the "outdent"), so please let this part end and continue up there. Thanks. --Parzival418 Hello 08:03, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it is necessary to attempt to control the discussion. Please let the topics go where they go and replies occur where they occur. Often times, the same points are made in many places. —Viriditas | Talk 02:31, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
That was not an attempt to control the discussion, it was a request to please continue at the other place on the page because I was finding the split discussion confusing. If I'm finding it confusing as one of the primary contributors to the debate, I can imagine that if anyone else ever reads this multi-threaded topic they'll be even more consfused. I'm not controlling, just asking. You are welcome to write wherever on the page you prefer. --Parzival418 Hello 03:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
This is the place for the discussion, not the section by "uninvolved editors". You're not supposed to comment on my comments there. Infrared Roses is not really space music; it's considered a sound collage. And, I think it would be a good idea to have an article like Space (Grateful Dead), following the example of Rhythm Devils. —Viriditas | Talk 03:54, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
"Infrared Roses" is not really space music; it's considered a sound collage. What reliable source has stated that? Stephen Hill played it on "Hearts of Space", so he must think it's "space music". It may also be a sound collage, but where is it written that there can't be a sound collage that's also spacemusic? Aren't a lot of ambient tracks sound collages and also considered to be spacemusic?I think it would be a good idea to have an article like Space (Grateful Dead), following the example of Rhythm Devils. Sure, that would be an interesting article. But it wouldn't change the fact that there exists some spacemusic that is not ambient, or that some reliable sources do not classify spacemusic as a subgenre of ambient. --Parzival418 Hello 04:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
As for the use of "space" to describe these genres, the term "space" is used to describe the ambient nature of the music itself. Look up the words "space" and "ambient". So, what types of spacemusic can be considered non-ambient? And, which RS claim that spacemusic is not ambient? —Viriditas | Talk [04:35, 6 July 2007]
"what types of spacemusic can be considered non-ambient?" Two examples are antique Religious Choral, a long series typified by #147: Music from a Russian Cathedral, and Celtic of the type I call Whistle Celtic, of which there have been many, very popular HoS shows. These musics were retro-discovered to be spacey, they were borrowed and segue-blended for their effect, but their home genre is acknowledged on HoS, and they were never background music by any stretch.
The first is beyond dispute. Any notion that Ambient could somehow claim subgenre status for antique Western religious music is offensively revisionist. For the second, any claim that Celtic is a subgenre of Ambient is likely to start an Irish bar fight. Much of this same whistle Celtic music has been played for decades on Thistle & Shamrock. Fiona Ritchie has a good relationship with HoS, but I suspect she would bristle at the idea that Celtic was a 'subgenre of Ambient' (or spacemusic).
"Subgenre" is unacceptable. The phrase "type of" is doubtful now that I know there is an issue, and must be used carefully so as not to imply subservience or subsumation of one long-established genre to another. "Component genre" or "genre component" might work. Milo 05:00, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

We seem to have 2 editors here who share the identical opinion that "anything played on Hearts of Space = space music". Presumably this includes everything from Arvo Part to Tangerine Dream via Vangelis, world music and pretty much the world's entire musical oeuvre with the exception of country, heavy metal and rock. By using the same approach I could argue that anything I play on my ambient show = blues music, because that's what I feel like calling it, and that in fact there is no such thing as space music because I never use the term on air. Plainly both propositions are ludicrous, because musical genres are not defined by personal choice - they are defined by common stylistic elements. As it says in the article, space music is "broadly characterised as comprising complex sonic textures whilst lacking conventional melodic, rhythmic, or vocal components, thereby facilitating for the listener a sense of "spatial consciousness", "other-worldliness" or sensations of floating or flying." This is what space music means to the vast majority of people familiar with it, in 2007. --Gene_poole 00:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Our dispute is on its way to being settled by disambiguation: there's "space music" and there's "spacemusic".
If that disambiguation is fairly done then "spacemusic" is primarily defined by the reliable source of the HoS playlist server. If they are fairly and equally disambiguated, then I don't have too much issue with "space music" being called a subgenre of ambient. Obviously, Brian Eno, you, and Gardener are all Commonwealth citizens where there is little knowledge of HoS, so that makes sense.
There are already at least two long Ambient artist lists. Simply link to them for the "space music" disambiguation section. The list here is a "spacemusic" notable artists list, verified with the HoS playlist server, and it should be labeled that way.
I agree with Parzival418 that specific albums should be added to the artist listing. For example, some of Vangelis is so dark that it's completely unplayable on HoS, yet other Vangelis pieces have been welcomed by HoS.
Art is what one can get away with. Steven Hill and Anna Turner got away with naming a genre which happened to be their personal choice. Their personal choice of the HoS segue-blend filter rose to an art form. Hill was after all, an architecture student, and Turner provide the feminine balance of "hearts". The U.S. public radio audience widely endorsed their genre and funded a minor musical taste into a hit by public radio standards. One can't argue with entertainment success.
The HoS segue-blend filter is what makes spacemusic different from musics and other segue-blends which crossover to it. To make a bit more of this point for non-fans who say it superficially sounds the same to them, when you invite music into your head with headphones while deeply relaxed, even one really unpleasant musical experience can make you never want to listen to that show again, because you no longer trust the producer. That I know of, Hill, Turner, and HoS have never failed that trust in 800-some shows. Milo 05:00, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
We've been through this time and time again, and you're still missing the point completely. Disambiguation cannot be used to invent entire musical genres or new terminologies just because you feel like it. The "HOS segue-blend filter" is merely whatever music Stephen Hill decides to play on his show. It's no big deal. Hundreds of radio programmers do it around the world daily. Selecting music for broadcast does not and never will "create" a musical genre. Genres are defined by specific unifying characteristics inherent in the music. Your comments concerning "feminine balance", "entertainment success" and "trust" etc are personal speculations unsupported by any third party source. Your comments about "commonwealth citizens" are nonsensical babble. Please keep your postings on-topic and coherent--Gene_poole 06:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)


To the other editors: The spacemusic genre has been named since 1973, and have I provided background information to explain its structure and fan loyalty, not intended to be included in the article without RS. That thousands of spacemusic fans have made the show notably successful is not speculation. For RS, Steven mentions this success on the HoS web site, and there may be other sources.
Gene is a rival show producer with a serious conflict of interest, who I think should not be editing this part of the article under WP:COI ("Editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with,"). Because of COI, of course he might say that a personal choice show filter can't create a genre, but that is nonetheless how this genre was created.
It's also a disingenuous claim, since personal choices on radio shows were strongly involved in the creation of other genres. Only after those personal radio programming choices were reinforced by fan acclaim and financial support did musicologists identify the unifying characteristics of those genres. An example is Memphis Soul Music/Memphis sound promoted by DJs Nat D. Williams and Rufus Thomas of WDIA who "brought street to the station". By analogy, Hill and Turner brought spacey-sound to the station on KPFA (including use of a lot of reverb during announcing breaks).
The important point seems to be that Gene has refused disambiguation in proximity to a direct and unambiguous COI rivalry, and therefore his opinion should be discounted under COI precedent if other editors agree. Milo 00:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Preliminary Request for comment

[re-editing later in time, to add this reference to the updated RFC location]

Note to newly arriving editors: The Request for Comment section has been refactored and moved to a new section below, at this link:

Talk:Space music#Request for Comment. Please enter your comments there in the spaces provided. Thank you.

The comments in this section below are the original statements of the issues that have now been refactored and presented in the new section.

[original contents of this section follow here] --Parzival418 Hello 23:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Please note that an invitation for input by uninvolved third parties has been posted at WP:Requests for comment in an attempt to achieve a real consensus here. Editors are requested to refrain from making further changes to this article until there is clear evidence that the proposed changes are supported by consensus. --Gene_poole 00:52, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Gene, in order for other editors to comment, it would be helpful to review a list of current problems that does not make reference to any editors. And please, keep the list brief. —Viriditas | Talk 06:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
That's pretty easy. There are currently 2 contending versions of the article:
this one, which demonstrates that most reliable third party sources classify space music as type of ambient music: [9]
and
this one, which promotes the theory that space music and ambient are different genres: [10]
I encourage any editors interested in commenting to read the cited references for each version in detail. --Gene_poole 01:05, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


I am one of the editors involved in the debate about this article, as is the editor who posted the description of the issue above.

I welcome this RFC, and I welcome all editors to bring their comments.

I'm having some trouble with the above statement of the problem though. It's presentation is biased due to the use of the words "demonstrates" and "promotes" in regards to the two options, implying that one is correct and the other is an upstart "theory" trying to usurp the throne of correctness. The statement also makes claims about third party sources that have not been shown to be correct. -- Showing which is correct is in fact, one of the the points of this Request for Comments.


I'll post an alternate statement of the issue. I tried to make this balanced. If someone sees bias in the way I present this, please mention it and let's come up with a clear and unbiased statement of the question so we're all talking about the same thing.


Is "Space music" a sub-genre of "Ambient music", or is it a separate but related genre?
Does any music exist that is considered by reliable, verifiable sources to be "Space music" that is not also considered by those reliable sources to be "Ambient music"?
Can this question be definitively answered by citing reliable sources, or is this a situation where the sources do not agree? If the sources do not agree, does that mean there may be more than one interpretation that needs to be reported in order for the article to remain neutral and factual?


I do not see this as a debate about which "version" of the article is the right one. The above questions need to be answered so that a proper article can even be written. So far, every time one or another editor has tried to do so, there has been conflict about this basic starting point, and the result has been the article has not progressed. What we need is consensus on the direction of the article and how to interpret and present the cited sources. That would give us a foundation on which to improve the article.

Space music is a respected and innovative genre that helped to shape other forms of music that came later and even changed the directions of some parts of the music industry. It's a topic that deserves a high-quality article.

There's no hurry on this process. It will take a while for more editors to show up, and Wikipedia is not paper, so if the article is in flux for a while, that's OK. --Parzival418 Hello 05:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


Comment. For now, I'll make a few initial comments about the questions above. I don't consider these to be my "final" or "definitive" arguments, they're just some ideas to consider, and I am interested in responses.

It seems the difficulty is - in the "outside world" there is no consensus among reliable sources of "the actual real truth" of the relationship between "space music" and "ambient music." The article should accurately reflect that diversity of thought by exploring the ways the terms have been used by various music critics and writers, presenting them in contrast so that readers can see this is a complex subject.

These terms have evolved over many years. It's not like mathematics or computer science where there is a formal definition in a reference book. I'll give an initial example: many people, including noted music writers and radio producers, consider Kitaro to be Space music. He has been played on the radio program "Music from the Hearts of Space" and he is listed in this article as a notable artist in the genre. But I'm pretty sure that no-one anywhere in any published source has referred to Kitaro's music as "Ambient," simply because it's not. (If there is a source for that, I would like to see it). His music has melodies, chord progressions, rhythms, and an neo-classical harmonic structure. So, based on this one example, it's not possible, not verifiable or attributable, that Kitaro's music is "Ambient". But it is verifiable and attributable that his music is considered by at least some reliable sources to be "Space music." That means, not all Space music is Ambient music and therefore Space music is not a sub-genre of ambient music.

While my argument above is based in logic, it is not original research or synthesis, because it can be verified with reliable sources.

Some space music is ambient music, and some ambient music is space music. They are closely related genres, but there is music of each kind that is not of the other, so they are not the same; one is not contained within the other.

Regarding the references listed in both versions of the article, multiple footnotes come from only one or two essays. If you read through those essays, you'll find exactly the point I'm making. Even the writers of those essays themselves, within those essays, contradict themselves and say that they are not sure how to describe the differences between the terms, or that the terms overlap yet are not the same.

A funny example of this is that in the two versions of the article there are footnotes from the same essay, but quoting different parts of the essay to support opposite viewpoints! I'll bring specific quotes from the essays when I have a chance, but for now, you can read them in full at the links where they are listed and you'll find these interesting points.

Summary of my initial comment: These two music genres are contemporary and fluid, not rigidly defined. There is no dictionary to tell us what they are. Reliable sources do not all agree on the meanings. All we can do is report what reliable sources have said about them and do so without bias as best we can. --Parzival418 Hello 05:09, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


Discussion of refactoring the RFC for clarity


[re-editing later in time, to add this reference to the updated RFC location]

The Request for Comment section has been refactored and moved to a new section below, at this link:

Talk:Space music#Request for Comment. Please enter your comments there in the spaces provided. Thank you.

The remaing comments in this section below is the discussion of the refactoring procedure.

[original contents of this section follow here] --Parzival418 Hello 23:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


I would like to get Parzival and Gene's permission to refactor this section to make it more acessible. I will not change the meaning in any way, and would recommend both editors fix my changes if they allow me to do this. —Viriditas | Talk 08:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree it does need better organization. I considered doing that before I entered my comments, but I didn't because I wanted to avoid any extra friction. So, yes, I accept your offer - under the condition you listed - that you won't mind if I re-edit the refactored version if my portion does not seem to carry my intended meaning clearly. If that's OK with you, then please proceed. I think it would be a good idea if you note at the top that you are doing the refactoring with our permission (assuming Gene agrees), and please preserve this conversation where we are agreeing to the refactoring, perhaps in a preliminary section just above the refactored RFC section. --Parzival418 Hello 10:35, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. I'll wait to hear from Gene. —Viriditas | Talk 11:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Feel free to refactor the above as much as you feel necessary. The suggestion that space music is not a genre of ambient is, however, utterly ludicrous. The vast weight of historic convention, 30 years worth of radio broadcasts by multiple major nationally-syndicated radio shows, hundreds of CD releases and mountains of written reviews and commentary on the subject all support the position that the terms "ambient" and "spacemusic" are mutually interchangeable terminologies. There is simply NO spacemusic that is not also ambient. The fact that 1 WP editor disagrees with this is, frankly, irrelevant. --Gene_poole 23:26, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Gene, I'll leave this section, but move the RfC request to a new one, with a clear outline between the two (or more) positions in this dispute. Please feel free to modify my changes as you feel necessary. —Viriditas | Talk 00:25, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Gene_poole, Thank you for agreeing to the RFC and allowing a neutral party to refactor the presentation.
For the record, the following statement in your comment just above is incorrect: "The fact that 1 WP editor disagrees with this is, frankly, irrelevant". There are at this time at least three editors who have stated disagreement with your ideas on this topic. And not one other editor has yet stated agreement with you. Maybe they will, we'll find out about that over time. --Parzival418 Hello 01:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Miss_Bea_Haiving has been clearly identified as a blatant sockpuppet account. Your response to evidence clearly demonstrating this is further confirmation of that fact. Given that there is also very convincing evidence that you used at least one other sockpuppet in March 2007 in an attempt to get around the WP:3RR, any contributions which agree with the eccentric, non-mainstream opinion you are trying to include in this and related articles are highly suspect to put it mildly, and certainly cannot be accepted without extremely close scrutiny by multiple outside observers. --Gene_poole 03:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Gene, let's keep the behavioral stuff off this page. This also applies to any others taking snipes at Gene. Take that somewhere else. —Viriditas | Talk 03:08, 29 June 2007 (UTC) (Revised: —Viriditas | Talk 03:36, 30 June 2007 (UTC))
I'm happy to deal with the longterm sockpuppet abuse issue that has been shown to exist here through the proper channels, however third party contributors also need to be aware of it at the outset, as it will undoubtedly have a complicating effect on the discussion for however long it takes before the puppetmaster and related accounts have been blocked. --Gene_poole 03:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Trust me, I see where you are coming from; you aren't the only editor to have encountered this type of trolling. But remember, the best way to stop trolling is to ignore it. Word to the wise. —Viriditas | Talk 03:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Gene, In March 2007, the only person who saw any sockpuppets was you. Not one other editor supported your viewpoint. If I am wrong about that, you are welcome to show us a link to another editor claiming that I was a sockpuppet. You can't, because there aren't any. When you reported us, the WP:RFCU formally determined that we are not sockpuppets. If you have filed a new report, please provide the links so we can see how it turns out.
As far as your opinions about whether or not my views are eccentric, the RFC will determine that according to consensus. --Parzival418 Hello 04:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Viriditas, when you are doing the refactoring, it may be helpful to know that Gene has already invited editors from several locations, so there may be visitors before the refactoring is complete. I suggest you post a notice under the new and original section headings indicating that refactoring is in progress and letting them know that if they want to enter comments now, that's OK, but the comments may be moved to the appropriate sub-section as aresult of the refacoring process.

When the setup is ready, we should post new direct section-links at the RFC notices. There is one notice here: on Wikiproject Music and the main one at the RFC noticeboard. I don't know if there are others yet or not.

Also, in the above linked post at Wikiproject Music, Gene indicated that similar attention is needed at Ambient music and New age music. Certainly, there is an overlap because those are related genres, and the articles all mention each other. I recommend that we centralilze this RFC to this page for now, since this is where we've all been working on it. It might be good to add the RFC invitation to those other pages and invite those editors here, but we should avoid having the same discussion in three or more places which would only cause extra work and confusion. If you agree with me about this, please discuss it with Gene. It would not behelpful to have multiple overlapping RFCs at the same time. Thanks for your help. --Parzival418 Hello 01:26, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed; those are good ideas. —Viriditas | Talk 03:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Comment

Dispute over whether or not Space music is a sub-genre of ambient music or a separate but related genre. This dispute also involves New Age music and Ambient music due to their relationship to space music. To avoid confusion and duplicated effort, please do not split this discussion between here and the other two articles. Once the RFC reaches consensus, the results can be presented and discussed at the other articles.

Disclosure

This RFC has been refactored by a user not involved in the original dispute.

[edit] Claims, reasons, and evidence

Space music is a type of ambient music.ver Space music spans musical styles with the common element of creating a sense of outer and inner space. References do not agree on how it is categorized relative to other genres. The article should present the information but not draw a conclusion, per WP:NPOV and WP:OR.

Proposed version: here.
  1. "... Originally a 1970s reference to the conjunction of ambient electronics and our expanding visions of cosmic space ... In fact, almost any music with a slow pace and space-creating sound images could be called spacemusic." - Stephen Hill.[11]
  2. "Ambient music has a rhythmic or trance-like nature, with (generally) electronic keyboards and/or spacemusic melodies or themes." - Lloyd Barde[12]
  3. "Ambient had come to mean music with a rhythmic or trance-like nature, using (generally) electronic keyboards and/or Space Music melodies or themes... (Nu) Ambient music grew into its own genre out of the "chill-out" rooms that became a part of the rave scene, a place to escape the pounding, throbbing techno beats (often in excess of 160-180 beats per minute!), where DJ's mixed together nature sounds, Space Music tracks, and tape loops or other sound samples." - - Lloyd Barde, Backroads Music - from an essay published in 2004[13]
  1. Note about this RFC: This section was created before the new version linked just above was written. While there are a few quotes here that offer perspective, there are many reliable source references in this new version of the article. It may be best to view the different article versions to see the full extent of reliable source references for this option.
  2. "When you listen to space and ambient music you are connecting with a tradition of contemplative sound experience whose roots are ancient and diverse. The genre spans historical, ethnic, and contemporary styles." --What is Spacemusic? by Stephen Hill, founder, Music from the Hearts of Space [14]
  3. "new age, neo-classical, space, electronic, ambient, progressive, jazzy, tribal, world, folk, ensemble, acoustic, meditative, and back to new age... The order and placement is no accident; each comes in and out of the previous, leading into the next, with shades of overlap and crossover visible at every turn. Each 'type' has its own history, its own cornerstones and 'hall of fame' artists and titles. Each has crystallized and grown, achieving greater artistry over time, and becoming more recognizable in the marketplace." - Notes on Ambient Music by Lloyd Barde, Backroads Music, essay published in the Hyperreal Music Archive [15]
  4. "Slow-paced, space-creating music from many cultures, ancient bell meditations, classical adagios, creative space jazz, and the latest electronic and acoustic ambient music are woven into a seamless sequence unified by sound, emotion, and spatial imagery." -- description of Hearts of Space on the website of WBHM - NPR, 2007 [16]
  5. "A timeless experience...as ancient as the echoes of a simple bamboo flute or as contemporary as the latest ambient electronica. Any music with a generally slow pace and space-creating sound image can be called spacemusic. Generally quiet, consonant, ethereal, often without conventional rhythmic and dynamic contrasts, spacemusic is found within many historical, ethnic, and contemporary genres." -- Contemplative music, broadly defined by Stephen Hill, founder, Music from the Hearts of Space [17]

[edit] Statements by editors involved in dispute

Please keep statements shorter than 100 words.

[edit] Gardener of Geda

The concept of space music cannot be defined by "Hearts of Space" alone and is undefinable in a purely encyclopaedic way, as the term is too loaded with opinion, and too closely associated with commercial interests, who, it seems to me, simply use it as an alternative to the much-derided term, "New age".

[edit] Gene poole

All space music, without exception, is a sub-set of ambient: reliable sources confirm this. The producers of the "Hearts of Space" radio show coined the catch-all term "space music" to describe the drone or beatless style of ambient music which they sometimes feature - but "space music" is not a musical genre: the term is synonymous with certain types of drone-based or beatless ambient music. This is unequivocally demonstrated by the programming on all "ambient music" FM radio show in the USA, Australia and elsewhere, including Music from the Hearts of Space, Musical Starstreams, Echoes, Ultima Thule Ambient Music and Star's End. These shows are considered "ambient music", and all of them have been playing "space music" on a weekly basis for decades.

[edit] Milomedes

"Almost any music having a slow pace and space-creating sound images could be called spacemusic". Spacemusic was named in 1973 by Hill and Turner on "Hearts of Space" radio. USA spacemusic is defined by the contemplative uplifting HoS segue formula, avoiding depressive, spooky, atonal, or noisy "dark music". Spacemusic genre intends for foreground contemplation, especially with headphones. Spacemusic is not a type of ambient music, but both genres share many compositions. Eno's 1978 album defined background music named ambient. When sound images are faint, spacemusic becomes indistinguishable from background melodic ambient, but much ambient is not foreground imagery contemplative.

[edit] Parzival418

Space music is not a single genre, it is an unbrella term embracing music of many genres, cultures and times, to create contemplative experiences and spatial imagery. There is no single "dictionary definition" - it's contemporary and fluid, evolving. Published sources use long lists to describe Space music: new age, neo-classical, electronic and acoustic ambient, progressive, jazzy, tribal, world, folk, ensemble, meditative, from many cultures, classical adagios, creative space jazz, and more. The most often quoted source states clearly: "spacemusic is found within many historical, ethnic, and contemporary genres." Reliable sources do not agree on how Space music fits in the continuum of genres, though they do agree it's a broad concept. Therefore to keep the article NPOV, we must report what the sources have written about it, without undue weight or bias.

[edit] Statements by uninvolved editors

Please add new comments in this section.

[edit] Viriditas

  • Support disambiguation of separate topics to solve dispute. Space music is not necessarily the spacemusic of HoS, or Space music (Stockhausen). Sun Ra's Space music (Sun Ra) is one example; Space music (Grateful Dead), is yet another. {{Dabneeded}} added. —Viriditas | Talk 11:42, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Discussing disambiguation now is distracting and can cloud the issue. As we discussed elsewhere, whether there is a disambuguation or not, it would not help resolve the basic question. Please let the disambiguation question wait until after we address the main question posted in the definition of the RFC. Thanks. --Parzival418 Hello 08:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
My opinion is that disambiguation solves the basic issue. I don't see this as distracting or "clouding" anything - rather just the opposite. —Viriditas | Talk 02:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Disambiguation can't solve the basic issue, because Sun Ra or the Grateful Dead are not central to the question. Even if they had their own Space music articles, the debate remains in the "spacemusic of HoS" article: that there is no consensus in the outside world that all spacemusic is part of the ambient music genre. There are in fact, many sources that say otherwise. That question is unrelated to any other pages that might result from disambiguating. --Parzival418 Hello 03:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
(As an aside, Stephen Hill has played the Grateful Dead's "Infrared Roses" album on Hearts of Space, so that album would be listed on the split apart HoS version of the page anyway.) --Parzival418 Hello 03:26, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
This section is supposed to be for statements by uninvolved editors. You can move your comments to the section where we are having this discussion. —Viriditas | Talk 03:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I'd agree with Viriditas. Consider this early line from the article:

The term often refers to recordings or compositions found within the genres of ambient, new age and electronic music; and sometimes to works found within the western classical, world, Celtic, and experimental idioms. It generally refers to music that evokes a feeling of contemplative spaciousness...

  • I am very highly skeptical of the idea that "ambient" (as in, Muzak) music, intended to improve mood without distracting the listener, who typically is busy shopping, has much in common with "new age" in the sense of inducing a sensation of floating or flying. So my sense is that the basic problem is insistence on treating the topic as only one subgenre of music, when in fact the term is used in more than one way by different authors. It doesn't matter so much if some of those authors (reviewers, critics, whatever) are less important than others; the encyclopedia article wants to be unambigous. It seems to me the best solution is a disambiguation page pointing to two articles (at least), "Space Music (New Age genre)" and "Space Music (Ambient)" for example. But at the very least, sentences treating the term as applying to one genre, mixed in with references to two or more different genres, is confusing. What Musak has in common with New Age (if anything) is not, I don't think, what's important here. What needs to be clear is that there is a Muzak sense of the term, and a New Age sense of the term. If only one is "important" then the article can go on to describe only the important sense, but it should be unambiguous that it is doing so. Pete St.John (talk) 19:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cricket02

In reading both older and newer versions of this article, and this talk page, all the while I thought, "why not just combine all the sources" because both arguments actually make sense to me. A good encyclopedic article would encompass all angles based on sources. Which is why I support this new version as of 07/15/07 (oldid=id144908783). In my opinion, it seems to represent all views fairly and in a neutral tone with what seems to be all possible sources combined. I commend all editors involved for their diligence and what must be hours upon hours of research. As far as "notable artists", I would stick with the ones that can be sourced and turn the section into prose. It seems there are many artists who have recorded this type of music but at the same time is not their usual genre that they perform, and that could possibly be mentioned as well. I did notice that this article is in both "Music genres" and "New age music" categories. I don't think I read that this was a concern, but if so, sure -- why not. Listed in both cats would be a fair representation. Cricket02 13:56, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. With a reservation here and there, I too like the new version 07/15/07 (oldid=id144908783).
Most of the spacemusic notable artists I have sourced with the HoS playlist server, but there are a few more recently added by fans that I haven't vetted.
My impression is that this list is the most-read section of the article. The problem with changing the artist list into prose is that lists of names and titles become hard to read in prose, and readability is why lists exist. For several reasons, adding HoS-verified composition titles with source album is important, so maybe a compromise between list and prose using well-indented discography-style text blocks makes sense.
Space music albums are categorized and sold in the New Age sales bin, and Hearts of Space recordings will also be found there. As a music business category it's uncontroversial, and the music genre fans know which is which. New Age as a genre is much lighter listening and more simply constructed than spacemusic. For example, it generally lacks heavy, extended drones, or submerged counterpoint that's difficult to follow without headphones. For quality New Age music, I recommend the John Tesh PBS concert special Live at Red Rocks (1995). Milo 02:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Early use of the term

"Space music" only started to gain wide currency in the 1970s. There is no evidence whatsoever that the early uses of the term by Sun Ra etc gained any sort of public acceptance or even bare recognition. The total lack of evidence proves that the term did not enjoy wide currency. There is no need to provide references to "prove" a negative, as the total lack of sources is the only available proof.--Gene_poole 10:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with your reasoning on this, but it's a minor point so I'll leave that sentence as-is and not replace the fact tag you removed.
As far as Sun Ra... he was known in both the Berkeley scene where HoS started, and in the Philadelphia scene where Echoes started. He did not simply use the term in 1956 and then let it fade away. He based his entire 45 year music career on "space music", until he died in 1993. He continually spoke and wrote about the idea.
In 1971-72, he taught at UC Berkeley, the same place where in 1973 the first "Music from the Hearts of Space" broadcasts originated. Also in 1972, Sun Ra produced a 30 minute film titled "Space is the Place" in collaboration with KQED, the public TV station in San Francisco. It was filmed in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, less than one year before the first "Hearts of Space" was broadcast on public radio in the same area.
Not likely Hill and Turner would not have known of Sun Ra's presence at the university, or of the local public TV broadcast of his film, or of his use of the term "space music" -- Sun Ra was a charismatic person who generated a lot of attention among the students due to his unusual teaching methods (ie, using classtime for impromptu solo and group performances).
One of these days, some of that info should be added to the history section. (Yes, I do have the references). --Parzival418 Hello 11:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
There were a lot of things going on in the early 70s, and everything was influenced by the success of the Moon missions. Why do you say that HoS originated from UCB? What relationship do you see between KPFA-FM and UCB? Sun Ra's music is best categorized as Avant-garde jazz. If there is a relationship between space music and Sun Ra, that should be sourced. —Viriditas | Talk 04:19, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I missed your comment here previously, hence the delayed reply. What relationship do you see between KPFA-FM and UCB? - nothing direct, just that they are in the same town so there was cross-pollination of ideas. relationship between space music and Sun Ra- I don't see Sun Ra's music as the same kind of "spacemusic" currently performed on HoS, etc, but his idea of using music to attain expanded consciousness was similar, and he used the same term, in the same town, and got lots of attention for it at the time. It's possible that may have been part of the word being used for the new radio show. I'm not saying there is a causal relationship - as your friend Ling.Nut wrote, we can't know if there was or not. But since they were in the same area at the same time, and used the same term, I thought those facts should be mentioned... but without making any kind of original research assumption that they are directly connected. It seems worthy of mention and that to leave it out would give an incomplete picture.
As an aside - I'm not adding this to the article -space music artist Robert Rich lists Sun Ra's album Cosmos on his list of albums that have greatly influenced his music (here's the link: [18] .--Parzival418 Hello 18:45, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Approach

I posted significant modifications to the article today. For reference after changes are applied, here is a link to a snapshot of the updated version at this time.

I based my approach strictly on the policies of WP:NPOV and WP:V. I avoided POV forks about the definition by not aggregating the statements supporting each definition. Instead, as the NPOV policy recommends, I reported the statements of the sources, weaving the opposing views together in the text without undue weight or drawing conclusions.

I've not taken a stand one way or the other on whether space music is or is not a form of ambient music. What I've done is gathered and presented everything I could find spoken or written by reliable sources. I still have a few more references, but it was getting kind of long, so I only included the strongest ones.

There is a lot of other new information in the article now too, based on solid references, unrelated to that one question about how space music relates to ambient music. --Parzival418 Hello 23:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You've done such enormously diligent research on this version that I hesitate to object. :)
However, about the sentence, "[Hill] in recent years has dropped the term "spacemusic" as the defining concept of his radio program and now uses the phrase "contemplative music, broadly defined.[12]" While I recall that "contemplative music" has been one of several defining concepts for a long time, "dropped the term "spacemusic" " is not verifiable by examination of the source page [12 --> http://hos.com/history.html]. The essay you reference titled Contemplative music, broadly defined contains genre references to the term "spacemusic" as well as acknowleging the contemporary morphing toward the term "Ambient".
In the second paragraph:
"Hosted by Hill and original co-producer ANNA TURNER, within three years the program signed its 200th station and became the most successful new music program in public radio history, as well as the most widely syndicated program of 'spacemusic' — a tastemaker for the genre."
In the final sentence:
"The ancient resonances of drums, bells, and flutes, the exotic tones of gongs and gamelans, the digital sounds of the Ambient frontier; in its third decade, Hearts of Space continues to deliver the best of the contemplative sound experience, with spacemusic from near and far out."
At that same page you will see a parallel sidebar essay titled What is Spacemusic?. Altogether, the referenced web page does not justify the statement that "spacemusic" is being dropped as a defining concept. Milo 03:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
"dropped the term "spacemusic" " is not verifiable by examination of the source page
-- Good point, thanks for digging up the details on that. I've changed the article to remove that statement. If you feel it needs further clarification or better wording, please advise. --Parzival418 Hello 05:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Closer attention needs to be paid to what the sources say and less interpretation. Same holds true for the film section; the sources there say nothing about spacemusic for most of the films cited. —Viriditas | Talk 04:11, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I've added several more references in the film section, as well as additional films and composers. Please check them out and see if you find the references satisfactory. I consider that part of the article to be in its initial stage, which is why I included the section-stub tag there. --Parzival418 Hello 05:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. The article as it stands needs a major re-write. The references taken as a whole (rather when selectively cherry-picked) are pretty clear that "space music" is nothing more than a term used to describe certain types of ambient music - particularly styles that are associated with the New Age sub-genre of ambient.
In fact the term seems to be used completely interchangeably with "new age" and "ambient" by all major US-based authorities on the subject, including Stephen Hill himself.
So, whatever else it may be, it's definitely not a genre in its own right. In fact, the reference sources show that it's a terminology of extremely minor significance, to which the present article ascribes undue weight.--Gene_poole 04:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
WP:NPOV#Undue_weight does not apply to a decision about whether or not a term is notable enough for inclusion. That policy section states:
NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each.
That is what this article is doing. If there is undue weight to any particular source, let's address that particular issue and insure there is not undue weight. While the term "space music" is of minor significance in the marketplace, the fact that it is used by radio shows that syndicate to hundreds of stations and appears in the databases of major retailers and the All Music Guide (where it is listed as a subgenre of New Age), indicates that it does satisfy WP:NOTABILITY.
  • the term seems to be used completely interchangeably with "new age" and "ambient" by all major US-based authorities on the subject
  • nothing more than a term used to describe certain types of ambient music - particularly styles that are associated with the New Age sub-genre of ambient.
--those two statements are clearly not supported by mainstream references. For example, the All Music Guide, world's largest database of musical metadata (part of a billion dollar company, Alliance Entertainment), lists both Space Music and Ambient music as subgenres of New Age music, directly opposing your contention, here on their New Age music genre page. In addition, here on their Ambient music genre page, they do not list either Space music or New Age music as a subgenre of Ambient.
There may be some sources that do agree with you, I think there might even be some in the current version of the article. But All Music Guide does not, and it's about as mainstream reliable source as one can get, considering that it is used as a database source for almost every chain store music retailer in the United States. --Parzival418 Hello 05:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
"[space music] definitely not a genre" Though some commercial venders don't list it, I don't recall any source saying that; so using your phrase, that must be your "eccentric POV". There's a range of opinions about what's a subgenre of what, they are now covered, and I agree with Cricket02 that such opinion range should remain in the article.
"[space music] used completely interchangeably with "new age" and "ambient" ..., including Stephen Hill himself" No, Hill doesn't use those terms interchangeably.
"Undue weight" So your position is that the Space music article ascribes undue weight to the term "space music"? Hm, if the subject is notable, I don't think that's technically possible, so on to the next issue. Milo 06:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
1. The only thing that all the sources are in agreement on is that space music is not a genre. The limited number of sources that do describe it as a genre use the term interchangeably with "new age" and/or "ambient". Perhaps this subtlety is lost on non native English-speakers.
2. Yes, Stephen Hill does use those terms interchangeably. He does so in virtualy every published source in which he describes his show.
3. My position is and always has been that this is an article about a minor music topic that's at best a synonym for certain types of ambient music. Claiming that it's a unique genre is misleading and lends undue weight to a position that is a piece of speculative original research that does not reflect the overwhelming weight of opinion expressed in available third party sources. --Gene_poole 07:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
"1." The first two sentences are mutually contradictory.
"2. ...Stephen Hill does use those terms interchangeably" Please provide three separate Stephen Hill article source citations for this assertion.
3. ..."Claiming ... unique genre is ... undue weight" They seem to be proportionally mentioned in the article, and that's the only undue weight that matters. "Claiming ..."unique genre is ... original research" Since there are now sources that state otherwise, your long-standing original research claim now appears to be terminated by sourcing per WP:OR, and therefore your claim is relegated to historic status. So, on to the next issue. Milo 08:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
1. The first two sentences are not mutually contradictory.
2. Please provide three separate Stephen Hill article source citations for your assertion.
3. The assertion that the original research in the article is not original research because you agree with it is meaningless due to the complete lack of sources supporting your POV. Your POV has been relegated to historic/hysteric status. So, on to the re-writing of this article. --Gene_poole 08:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
The gainsays indicate that you are out of plausible options to support your stated positions, so I assume they are incorrect.
On the OR issue, whether I agree with it is irrelevant. OR is by definition unsourced; I'm saying it's not OR because it is now sourced. Milo 09:28, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Despite your many months of ranting and trolling on this subject it has been comprehensively demonstrated that the overwhelming weight of reliable third party reference sources do not support your personal POV. Never did. Never will. Best you deal with it. --Gene_poole 12:05, 17 July 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Article content must reflect actual quoted sources

I have re-written the introductory paragraph so that it actually reflects the opinions expressed in the quoted sources - rather than the previous selective misinterpretation of those sources. Firstly, the sources show that Stephen Hill and Lloyd Barde use the term interchangeably with ambient music.

A very large proportion of the other reference sources now included in the article also clearly support this contention, as well as the contention that many other commentators use "space music" as a synonym for new age music.

Secondly, Stephen Hill's perspective on the descriptive terminologies associated with his radio show is very clearly delineated in the content of the programme description "Contemplative Music, Broadly Defined" here.

In the phrase "Hearts of Space grew out of former architect Stephen Hill's fascination with space-creating, ambient and contemplative music" it is readily apparent that Hill considers the primary 'genre upon which his radio show is based to be ambient - to which any other music of a "contemplative" nature may also be added from time to time.

This is in fact an entirely accurate reflection of the Hearts of Space playlist, which does occasionally incorporate broadly contemplative music from various genres (contemporary classical, mediaeval, ethnic) and various sacred traditions, both ancient and modern.

He uses the term "space creating" solely to describe the effect of the music he plays on his show. --Gene_poole 03:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

"...the sources show that Stephen Hill and Lloyd Barde use the term interchangeably with ambient music." If so, the current footnotes mostly don't verify it.
"...A very large proportion of the other reference sources now included in the article also clearly support this contention,..." This statement is demonstrated mathematically incorrect by the following footnote count — by "very large" you seem to mean "one":
  • Footnote 1: "ambient electronics" Not music.
  • Footnote 3: "space and ambient music" Ambiguous; could mean one each or both together.
  • Footnote 4: "ambient electronica" It's only some of the music played, if only because a significant portion of the HoS show is non-electronic.
  • Footnote 8: "ancient bell meditations, classical adagios, creative space jazz, and the latest electronic and acoustic ambient music are woven into a seamless sequence " Ambient musics are two of several components woven.
  • Footnote 14: "a mix of ambient, electronic, world, new age, classical and experimental music" Ambient is one of several mixed in.
  • Footnote 19[a]: "Ambient had come to mean music with a rhythmic or trance-like nature, using (generally) electronic keyboards and/or Space Music melodies or themes..." Ambient rhythmic/trance evolved using Space music components and/or synths, but is different than classic Space music.
  • Footnote 19[b]: "(Nu) Ambient music grew into its own genre [...] where DJ's mixed together nature sounds, Space Music tracks, and tape loops or other sound samples." (Nu) Ambient grew out of several components, one of which is Space music, so it is different than classic Space music.
  • Footnote 20: "Ambient music is a broader term, encompassing (at least) six sub-genres, part of which includes New Age or Spacemusic." Barde says one thing about Ambient. He claims Spacemusic is a subgenre of Ambient, yet Spacemusic is only one or two sixths of Ambient (depending on whether Spacemusic and New Age are conflated), so Ambient is different from classic Spacemusic, and not an interchanageable term.
  • Footnote 21: "new age, neo-classical, space, electronic, ambient, progressive, jazzy, tribal, world, folk, ensemble, acoustic, meditative, [...] Each 'type' has its own history, its own cornerstones and 'hall of fame' artists and titles. Each has crystallized and grown, achieving greater artistry over time, and becoming more recognizable in the marketplace." Barde now says a different thing about Ambient. Ambient is significantly different from, but overlap and crossover with the other 12 musics listed including space.
  • Footnote 25: "Ambient, spacemusic, dub, downtempo, trip hop, acid jazz...artists from all these categories" Ambient is a different category from spacemusic - not interchangeable terms.
  • Footnote 27: "spacemusic, also known as ambient, chill-out, mellow dub, down-tempo ....Anything but New Age." Sande quote says, Spacemusic is Ambient, interchangeable terms, but spacemusic is not New Age.
  • Footnote 28: "Hill's Hearts of Space Web site provides streaming access to an archive of hundreds of hours of spacemusic artfully blended into one-hour programs combining ambient, electronic, world, New Age and classical music." Another Sande quote says, ambient is a component of spacemusic with four other components, including New Age, so not interchangeable terms.
  • Footnote 63: "don't get confused and start thinking that classically crafted space music is a thing of the past." Classic space music exists as a concept, therefore different from musics that evolve from it or get confused with it.
I have searched the people-quotation footnotes and extracted 13 of them in the box below. Footnote 27 supports your statement, footnote 3 is ambiguous (without a source context anyway), footnotes 19[a], 19[b], 20, 21, 25, and 28, to one degree or another distinguish space from ambient musics, meaning these terms are not interchangeable. The appropriate weight ratio for the article is 1 to 1 to 6 unsupportive of your statement.
"as well as the contention that many other commentators use "space music" as a synonym for new age music." Maybe someone else can do the same footnote search I did for "spacemusic" =?= "ambient" for "spacemusic" =?= "new age".
"it is readily apparent that Hill considers the primary 'genre upon which his radio show is based to be ambient - to which any other music of a "contemplative" nature may also be added from time to time." I don't know if ambient can be technically defined as the primary component, since new ambient is probably as hard to define as space music. Hill does mention ambient frequently, so it would be reasonable to count the HoS playlist to find out. Milo 10:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You do not seem to appreciate the irony of disproving your own position by listing above a whole pile of references which show that space music is considered as merely one interchangeable element within the broad ambient music continuum by a wide range of authoritative sources. You have had 5 months to come up with references to support your contention that space music is not ambient. So far you still haven't produced a single one. --Gene_poole 11:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Gene, we first have to support the statement that space music is ambient. Then, we can go from there. Obviously, you have sources; even I myself have provided a few on several talk pages. Let's put those together, attribute the claims to authors, and represent them in the article. Ok? —Viriditas | Talk 16:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)


Reply to Gene_poole's comments, from above Milo's analysis of the references

Your comments about Stephen Hill and Lloyde Barde's statements appear to be your interpretations, not facts.

You wrote: Firstly, the sources show that Stephen Hill and Lloyd Barde use the term interchangeably with ambient music. A very large proportion of the other reference sources now included in the article also clearly support this contention, as well as the contention that many other commentators use "space music" as a synonym for new age music.

That's actually three statements:

(1) Hill & Barde use space music and ambient music as synonyms,
(2) "many other commentators" use space music as a synonym for new age music, and
(3) A very large proportion of the other reference sources now included in the article also clearly support this contention, as well as the contention that...

So we see that (1) and (2) are two separate contentions, connected by (3) indicating support for both (1) and (2).

You use this to support your article edit, where you wrote: (4) Many commentators use the term interchangeably with ambient music and new age music.

That edit is a combination of two separate unrelated statements (1) and (2), into one statement, a process known as "synthesis", which is a form of original research prohibited by WP:NOR.

In your statement (3), you made another synthesis, combining two sets of references that have different conclusions and referring to them as if they were one set of references supporting one combined conclusion (4), therefore that is another example of original research.

Also, your phrase (3) very large proportion does not fit the facts. Milo showed the references do not support interchangeability of ambient and space music. I've now done a similar list regarding the use of space music related to new age music, which I will post below, and similarly, it does not support your conclusion.

Aside from the above, your new statement (4) that many commentators use the term interchangeably with ambient music and new age music is different than your previous edit to the article intro that you re-instated many times: (5) space music is a type of ambient music.

If it's a subgenre, it's not interchangeable. Yet you used the same two references to support both versions.

Do those references state that space music is a subgenre of ambient as you wrote before (ie, not interchangeable because one contains the other but not vice-versa)? Or do they state that space music, ambient music and new age music are interchangeable, as you wrote this time? How could they could say both at the same time? --Parzival418 Hello 07:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Milo's analysis above and his new compromise version of the article text
  • The beginning of the intro: The compromise text is fine with me. In particular, Milo restored the information that Gene_poole removed that notes that space music brings together music from a range of genres. That's an important feature of space music and should not be removed from its prominent spot in the beginning of the intro where it supplies context for the entire article. I have now added several more footnotes in that sentence pointing to existing references that specifically support that point.
  • Milo wrote: Maybe someone else can do the same footnote search I did for "spacemusic" =?= "ambient" for "spacemusic" =?= "new age".... so, here goes:

Space music is a subgenre of New Age:

  • Footnote 4: All Music Guide - Space music listed as a subgenre of New Age music
  • Footnote 7: CD Baby - Space music listed as a subgenre of New Age music
  • Footnote 14: Space And Travel Music: Celestial, Cosmic, & Terrestrial... This New Age sub-category
  • Footnote 20: New Age Space music carries visions in its notes;
  • Footnote 21: no less than fourteen separate subgenres are being called New Age music. These include: [...] Space Music, [...] "
  • Footnote 22: other New Age subgenres, especially space music,
  • Footnote 34: Barnes & Noble [...] Space music is listed as a subgenre of New Age
  • Footnote 36: Although there is no sound in the vacuum of space, many New Age composers have looked upward for inspiration, creating an abstract notion of the sounds of interstellar music. Space indicates not only a style of composition, but also a certain cosmic consciousness....

Space music is interchangeable with new age music:
  • Footnote 23: 'Space' is a vital dimension of New Age music; so much so that one of the early appellations for the genre was simply "space music,"

Space music is not New Age music:
  • Footnote 19: a mix of ambient, electronic, world, new age, classical and experimental music...
  • Footnote 26: new age, [...] space, [...] ambient, [...] and back to new age... [...] Each 'type' has its own history, its own cornerstones and 'hall of fame' artists and titles
  • Footnote 31: a diversity of genres including: [...] ambient, spacemusic, [...] new age [...]
  • Footnote 32: spacemusic, also known as ambient, [...] Anything but New Age.
  • Footnote 33: hundreds of hours of spacemusic artfully blended into one-hour programs combining ambient, electronic, world, New Age and classical music.

Ambiguous:
  • Footnote 59: The terms New Age and Space Music have been aptly applied to the ethereal improvisational electronic work of Tangerine Dream

I think Milo included only footnotes from individuals in his analysis. I included organizations as well because they are reliable sources and have influence in the way people perceive the genres. Their information permeates the industry and is replied on by writers as well. They often hire writers, for example both Rhapsody and All Music Guide even provide bios for their writers and allow by-lines. If one had the time, one could track them down. Also, if we do omit those, only the first number would change, ie there would be 4 instead of 8 saying that space music is a subgenre of new age, with the result that space music would be seen as even more separate, ie less related. (Pretty much all mainstream databases and retailer sources consider space music a subgenre of new age, if they even acknowledge that it exists).

To relate the above information to the article, I'll start with the version Milo wrote, and go on from there.

  • Six referenced commentators do not use the term interchangeably with ambient music, one is ambiguous, and one does so. [8][9][10][11][12] Other comentators use the term interchangeably with new age music[citation needed]

The above is clearly more accurate and reliably sourced than the prior vague and unreferenced version by Gene_poole:

So if we have to have one of them, we should use Milo's. With the new information from the analysis above (Where more than one quote came from one person, I combined them in the count), the new sentence with the additional information reads like this:

  • Six referenced commentators do not use the term interchangeably with ambient music, one is ambiguous, and one does so. [8][9][10][11][12] Eight referenced commentators use the term space music as a subgenre of new age music (separate from ambient music) and do not use it interchangeably, one is ambiguous, one uses space music interchangeably with new age music, and four consider space music and new age music completely unrelated. [footnotes to be added here] {{fact}}

So I might insert this version, or maybe I'll wait for the replies here. I have not yet done the work of resolving all the references to the Wikimarkup footnotes, so if I add it I'll temporarily leave the {{fact}} tag in place until that is done.

In light of the full analysis, I recommend that we remove those two sentences completely from the introduction. With the full detail of the references to disambiguate the usage, the sentence is now too much detail for the intro. There is a full section that lists all the various viewpoints. If we want to keep the sentences, it seems to me they would be better placed following the first paragraph of the "Music Genres" section, because having it in the lead gives too much distracting priority to such a detailed count of references when really we just want to introduce an overview of the topic.

It seems awkward to me and I feel the article would read better without those two sentences, or at least with them moved into the Music Genres section.

But, if there is not consensus for removing them, or moving them, the new referenced version (with Milo's first sentence and citations about ambient, and the new second sentence with citations about new age music) is far superior to the prior version. --Parzival418 Hello 07:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Update - I added the sentence and it did make the intro look too complicated, so I moved the two sentences to the second paragraph of the Music Genres section.

Maybe they will need to be moved back, I don't feel strongly about this, but I think the article reads better this way for a reader not already familiar with the topic. --Parzival418 Hello 07:44, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I also added some wikilinks for related genres in the intro. Not implying they are synonyms or hierarchically related, but I think it will help to provide context. --Parzival418 Hello 09:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The counts of references as moved to the Music genres section fit perfectly in topic flow. Milo 10:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

In reviewing that part again this morning, the same five references there apply to the whole paragraph and not just the initial sentence - so I've moved them to the end of the second sentence and removed the fact-tag. Actually this paragraph doesn't really need references, since it is a summary count of all the related references in the entire article. Listing every reference that was counted would be redundant. Then again, the five references that are there now go to examples of specific separation of the terms, so I left those in place.

I also revised the first paragraph of the intro again - not a substantive change but an improvement for readability. --Parzival418 Hello 18:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Based on other editors' experience with, and my observation of unrelated controversial articles, I strongly recommend that each sentence with the reference counts each be fully referenced. Those editors have also said that even some multiple clauses in controversial sentences turn out to require individual referencing. Such heavily-referenced sentences can be somewhat of a challenge to read in a flow, but such sentence-specific and paragraph-redundant construction is necessary to hold the facts against fact-tag POV beavering. However, if there are too many reference numbers, you can create a footnote just to hold the other reference numbers. Milo 01:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stable version

I'm waiting for the article to stabilize before I jump in. —Viriditas | Talk 01:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Viriditas, your edits are welcome. My only concern about the various complicated discussions above is that we make no assumption that space music is part of any other genre, because there is too much variety in the statements by the sources for us to choose one particular viewpoint as the main one.
I accept that some of the sources consider there are either subgenre or interchangable relatonships, but we need to also acknowledge that other sources do not see it that way, ie, we need to avoid the original research jump of assuming certain narrow ideas are accepted mainstream definitions.
Regarding the notable artists section, I've removed a couple artists who mostly belong in the history section. For the others, we may be able to prune the list, but I recommend that we mostly keep the list until we can create one of the following: either (1) an album-based table that clarifies which works of the various artists contribute to space music, or (2) converting the list to prose, with details about their albums or their approaches to the music.
All in all, I respect your editing skills and your understanding of NPOV, so if you would like to make improvements to the article, I invite you to proceed. --Parzival418 Hello 09:52, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the invite. —Viriditas | Talk 09:58, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Info-box

Here is a proposed info-box for this article. The formatting to get it to fit with the existing photo is a bit tricky, but I have a version of the code worked out pretty well. I am offering the info-box here on the talk page for consensus first. Comments or edits on the content are welcome. --Parsifal Hello 09:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Technically, the music genre infobox does not employ an image parameter. I think we should keep the image out of this infobox, but if you would like to keep the image in the article, I wouldn't mind seeing it in another section. —Viriditas | Talk 09:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, certainly - I did not mean to include the image inside the info-box, maybe my comment was not clear. I meant to include the image elsewhere in the article. --Parsifal Hello 09:55, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I like how Traditional music does it: Infobox on top, image in section 1 (lead is section 0). —Viriditas | Talk 09:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I like that article too. For now I removed the proposed infobox from the talk page because I think it was linking to a category that should not be linked on a talk page. It can be recovered from the history if needed. But also, after further consideration, it seems too limiting in that it's made for hierarchical genres rather than the multi-dimensional musical range covered by this article. Since the related genres covered by the article's references don't fit easily into the structure of the infobox, it's not quite appropriate; so I withdraw my proposal and suggest we omit it. --Parsifal Hello 08:35, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I think you can make that argument about every music genre. I still think we can use the infobox, but I have no strong opinion on the matter. —Viriditas | Talk 00:33, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Drawn from a range of up to 30 genres

This claim appears to be primary research. I would suggest finding a secondary source to support it. If you can prove that all of the genres listed are actually categorized as space music, that would also suffice. —Viriditas | Talk 12:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Finding any other source is unlikely. WP:ATT permits descriptive use of primary sources when someone without special knowledge of the subject can verify/attribute the statement by inspecting the source.
The statement to attribute is not "all of the genres listed", but "up to 30 genres", precisely to avoid an impossible to resolve controversy of exactly which or exactly how many of the 30 listed at HoS are considered genres by dissenters. Milo 14:52, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
WP:ATT is an essay and there is no way to confirm the claim other than through an interpretation that isn't supported. Descriptive use of primary sources involves non-interpretations, like transcripts, interviews, quotes, etc. The present article crosses the line in several places and needs to be rewritten. —Viriditas | Talk 11:22, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
If there are problems, I'm amenable to improvements. When you say crosses the line in several places and needs to be rewritten I assume you mean rewritten in those particular places and not overall, is that correct? Other than the 30 genres issue, where do you see a line being crossed?
Regarding the "30 genres" statement, I'm not attached to that, but there several valid secondary sources state that space music is comprised of a variety of genres - some sources list five or six genres, while other sources make sweeping statements that are much more general and encompass genres from bamboo flute to classical to modern electronics.
So I don't see any problem with changing the wording in the way we present the summary of the sources and avoid the use of "30 genres", as long as we don't "conclude" that space music is the same as, or a type of, any single genre alone, because that's not accurate or verifiable. Most of the sources state that space music includes music from multiple genres and we need to stay faithful to the sources even if the wording is changed. --Parsifal Hello 18:21, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Unless a particular source claims there are 30 genres, we can't interpret that on our own from a website. Stick to what secondary sources say about it, and leave the interpretation to them. I'll address the other issues after this one is closed. —Viriditas | Talk 01:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, done. What do you think of the new wording? --Parsifal Hello 01:39, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
It's much better, but ref35 is all but worthless. Look, you may want to stand on the shoulders of giants. Have you read Dan Coffey's article "New Age Music", in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture?[19] Take a look at the references he is using. That's a good place to start. —Viriditas | Talk 01:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Correction: The find articles site doesn't seem to list Coffey's "further reading" section that I found in the same article, but hosted on Gale. Here it is:
  • Bergson, Billy, and Richard Horn. Recombinant Do Re Mi: Frontiers of the Rock Era. New York, Quill, 1985.
  • Diliberto, John. "Navigating the Shifting Terrain of New Age Music:The Evolution of a Genre, from World to Folk, Classical to Space." Billboard. April 6, 1996, 44-48.
  • ——. "New Age Matures." Billboard. April 1, 1995, 60-63.
  • Schaefer, John. "ECM and Windham Hill: A Tale of Two Labels."New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music. New York, Harper & Row, 1987.
  • Toop, David. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London, Serpent's Tail, 1996.
  • Werkhoven, Henk, with an introduction by Steven Halpern. The International Guide to New Age Music. New York, Billboard Books, 1998.
  • Zrzavy, Helfried C. "Issues of Incoherence and Cohesion in New Age Music." Journal of Popular Culture. Fall 1990, 33-54.
—Viriditas | Talk 01:56, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad you like the new wording better. That's how I had originally phrased it; it was later changed by someone else. Regarding ref35, what don't you like about that? It's the list of genres chosen by Stephen Hill to be performed on Music from the Hearts of Space radio. Since he was a main source in popularizing the term, in what way is his list of included genres not a good reference? Also, there are several other references with that sentence, so his reference does not stand alone and the statement is well-sourced.
Regarding the other references you listed, those are from an article about New Age music, not Space music, so most may not apply. I've read the two Billboard articles - they mention Space music only in passing. I thought of including them but it seemed too vague. I'll take another look and if they have valuable content for this article, I'll add it. I did include a different Billboard article in one of the soundtrack references.
I've read the Stephen Halpern intro to The International Guide to New Age Music, and he does not even mention the term space music at all, that's why I didn't include that reference in the article. I did however include several references from The New Age Music Guide, P.J.Birosik, 1989 Macmillon Publishing Company, New York,... one quote from Stephen Halpern, one from Anna Turner, and one from Dallas Smith.
I'm having trouble understanding what you're finding to be a problem with the references. If you have some more that would be good to include, certainly, let's add them. --Parsifal Hello 02:20, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Ref35 is not an appropriate, secondary source; it's a primary source. We can't interpret Hill's list of genres and apply them to this article unless we have Hill commenting on them directly and in context. An appropriate reference would support the text, not an interpretation of what you think the text means. As it stands, the lead is a WP:SYN, and we want to avoid that. Thanks for taking a look at the other refs I found in the encyclopedia article. —Viriditas | Talk 02:26, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
I did not write the lead version that you considered to be WP:SYN, someone else wrote that. I have re-edited it to a version that fairly conveys what the references support. And I removed ref35 from the lead. --Parsifal Hello 02:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ambient Visions

Doktor Who (talk · contribs) removed a definition of spacemusic from GC in the article with the the edit summary of "blatant lies, taken from blatant hoax sites".[20] I fail to see how directly quoting an interview is a "blatant lie", and I don't understand why the good Doktor considers Ambient Visions to be a "blatant hoax site." I've asked Doktor Who to bring his concerns to the talk page. I believe Parsifal is the original author of the content, although I could be wrong. From what I understand, Doktor Who has had a long running dispute with User:Gene Poole and since GP and GC are one and the same, this content removal appears to be in bad faith. —Viriditas | Talk 01:34, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I wrote that part of the content, based directly on the interview with GC on the Ambient Visions website. That website seems to be a reliable source. It provides many interviews with well-known artists and radio personalities, added over a period of 7 years. It would be a major effort to produce a site like that as a hoax and there is no evidence that has happened. GC/GP has commented to Viriditas on his talk page about the use of the quote, and aside from the content of what he stated about the quote (which is not relevant to this discussion here), GC/GP did not indicate that the interview never happened, so that is further support that the site is not a hoax. --Parsifal Hello 01:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
You are wrong, Viriditas. Some of GP's edits were useful, and one of his last reworking of the header of space music was far better than the present. Nevertheless, I believe that the whole story of "Atlantium" and the radio programme are merely hoaxes. Have you ever heard of google bombing? You know that I'm right, and that there is nothing personla, beside the point that I dont know him personally.Doktor Who 10:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm hoping there's a WP:Avoid way to moot this issue. In thinking about how important is the GC material, I note that GC isn't discussing space music by name, which introduces the ongoing genre controversy into Parsifal's interpretation. Since Doktor Who objects, for whatever reason, to this same content, why not consense the delete?
For source on the variety of content in spacemusic, the genre list at HoS is specific. Viriditas has some kind of objection that I've been too busy to research, but I think it can be resolved with quotations from sutable Wikiguides. Milo 19:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:Avoid sounds good to me. I have made the edit and removed the reference to GC's interview quotation. My accommodation on this does not imply any problem with the reference itself or with Ambient Visions website as WP:RS.
Note to Viriditas - we haven't heard from you on this yet, so if you don't agree with my action, please let us know. I still see the quotation as a valid reference, but it's not crucial since there are so many other references to the same point. If leaving this one out will improve the collaborative spirit, then it's OK with me to omit it. Your thoughts on this are welcome. --Parsifal Hello 22:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
My interview comments should only be quoted in this article if they reflect my actual opinion - not if they are selectively quoted in order to support a different opinion.
Doktor Who|Doktor Who's comments above bear no relationship to reality. Doktor Who|Doktor Who has been engaged in a personal vendetta against me for over 18 months, motivated solely by his own paranoid delusions and serious ongoing article ownership issues. This has recently resulted in him being blocked for actually posting threats of violence against other editors.
His suggestions that I don't exist, don't live in Sydney, haven't co-produced a radio show for nearly 2 decades and various other bizarre contentions are pure lunacy. There are dozens of reliable third party sources which show that these claims are textbook examples of the paranoid delusional condition.
We need to face facts here; Doktor Who:Doktor Who is a destructive menace to WP whose worthwhile contributions (limited as they are) are far outweighed by masses of tendentious, confrontational, offensive abuse. He should properly be blocked indefinitely - along with all of his many sock accounts. Hopefully Wikiscanner will deliver the evidence to finally deal with him properly. --Gene_poole 14:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Let's just deal with the issues. Forget personalities. The resident time lord removed your interview, I restored it, Parsifal removed it after further discussion with the Doktor, and Gene came back from vacation to agree with its deletion. Next? —Viriditas | Talk 02:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
It's a little difficult to "forget personalities" after being stalked and attacked for over a year and a half by a certifiable madman whose only "contributions" to any discussion consist of a blancmange of complete gibberish and paranoid ravings. --Gene_poole 03:06, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Let me rephrase: use this discussion page for article-related improvements. If you feel the need to elevate the dispute resolution process in regards to a simple, wayward Time Lord, then let us discuss that somewhere else. Now, back to space music. Can you give me a problem in the article you would like to see resolved? I'm ready. —Viriditas | Talk 03:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] new section

The first problem with the article is that it strongly implies that space music is a unique genre, which it is not. While some sources refer to it as a genre, the context in which the sources are making those comments make it obvious the person making the statement is using the term interchangeably with either "new age" or some variety of resonant, beatless "ambient". We need to insert a precise statement defining the term into the introductory paragraph, for starters. --Gene_poole 03:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Back on track. Was your problem addressed in this RFC or ignored? I just changed one of the categories. We have evidence it is a form of New Age and Ambient, but do we know if it is a unique genre? —Viriditas | Talk 04:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've rewritten the introductory paragraph so that it gives a clear definition of what the article is about. What the majority of sources agree on is that spacemusic is defined by a number of very specific characteristics. Those characteristics may appear in music that is otherwise classifiable as having its roots in entirely unrelated genres such as classical and world music. That does not mean that classical and world music = spacemusic - merely that some pieces of classical or world music induce feelings of floating, flying or spaciousness in listeners. --Gene_poole 06:33, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the Ambient category. I don't consense Space music categorizing under or within Ambient - they overlap each other.

One of the references distinguishes that classic space music still exists in the 1990's. I've offered to disambiguate classic spacemusic from "new" space music that might reasonably categorize under ambient, but IIRC, Gene refused. As I and others have stated many times, genre or not, (classic) spacemusic was named before ambient was named.

I'd say it's time to split the article since Gene will not agree that spacemusic has a history and psychoacoustic focus and ethic that is distingishable from ambient, and is important to classic spacemusic listeners. Milo 05:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

You cannot "consense" anything because there is no such word in the English language. Aside from that your personal opinions, unique interpretations and perspectives and original research theories cannot be included in this article because - as we have discussed many times before - they do not reflect actual real-world contemporary usages of terminology as reflected in the weight of reliable third party sources. I have reverted your change accordingly. --Gene_poole 06:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I consense with Milo's use of the word "consense" because even if it's not a dictionary definition word, this is a talk page and not an article, and really, we all know what he means when he uses that word. Since "consensus" is a noun, I see no problem with using it as a verb too.
Regarding the categories of "new age" and "ambient" on the article page, I "consense" that we omit them, since there is music played on Space Music radio shows that is of neither of those genres.
The issue seems to be the idea that "space music" is a genre. It's not, it's just a word describing a wide range of musical forms that offer listeners a spacious experience. Those musical forms include classical choral music and ancient bamboo flute. Those forms existed long before any of the words we're discussing - "spacemusic", "ambient", or "new age".
Lots of space music is "ambient," in the sense that Brian Eno defined, but lots of space music is not "ambient" in that sense. Likewise, there is space music that could be considered "new age", but some of it is too dark to fit into that category.
This is not a chess game in two dimensions. It's "space music" - so the chess game is at least 3D, like Spock's chess game in Star Trek. There are more axes than one or two. Music genres are defined by performance styles and instrumentation. "Space music" is defined by the way it affects the listener, as Stephen Hill and other reliable sources have stated. --Parsifal Hello 06:32, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
This is the English language WP. It is disrespectful, selfish, inefficient and counterproductive to not use the English language in all communications here. Editors cannot expect to have their opinions taken seriously if they propose to invent new words whenever it suits them - or because they do not possess sufficient command of the English language to articulate their thoughts in a manner which native English speakers can comprehend without unweildly, complex additional exposition by third parties.
Aside from that, spacemusic is NOT applied to all classical, world, celtic and other music. It is applied MOSTLY to ambient, new age and related music - and SOMETIMES to SOME PIECES OF MUSIC from other genres. In contemporary usage it is associated by MOST people who use the term with ambient and new age music. This is reflected in virtually all reliable third party sources, and as such needs to be reflected accordingly in this article. --Gene_poole 06:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've moved the "consense" discussion to a new section. Milo 20:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Gene_poole changed the article lead, with this edit summary:
restore definition in line with accepted contemporary usage supported by quoted third party sources
That is an inaccurate statement. It does not correctly reflect the sources and does not justify the change.
There are three problems with the edit, in particular this part:
term applied to certain types of ambient and related forms of music, including new age and electronic.
The defects with the edit are:
(1) The implication is that space music is mainly "ambient". That is not supported by the references. Most references state that "space music" includes a wide variety of genres. Some are ambient, but some clearly are not.
(2) The implication that "new age" music is related to "ambient" music. There may be some overlap, but there are many forms of new age music that are not at all ambient. This "space music" article does not quote sources that address the relationship of new age and ambient, and, that is not the topic of this article anyway, so that implication is WP:SYN and should not be included here. If that question is to be discussed, it should be discussed at the relevant articles but should not be included here.
(3) The edit removes "broad range of genres" as an element of the definition. In the many references, the wide scope of space music as drawing from many genres is the one element that is mentioned most often. By omitting that and focusing the lead on an unsupported relationship with ambient music in particular, the text of the article is moved in opposition to the majority of the reliable source references.
I'm not reverting at this time, however User:Gene Poole's edit is incorrect and needs to be changed. --Parsifal Hello 09:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I think Parsifal states it well.
• Among the several problems with Gene's edit, removal of the "broad range of genres", as replaced with "certain", is first and most important. I think some or all of this wording disagreement could go away with more specific reference to the HoS genre list. "Certain" is unecessarily weasely when the list at HoS is specific and has a count that can be stated here as "up to 30 genres" — which can be WP:Avoid read as meaning from zero to 30 without anyone having to decide exactly which of that HoS list is a genre or not.
• Second is the undue weight of association with ambient (though this is related to the need to split the article into "classic" and "new" I mentioned above).
• Third is the "related forms of music", since they aren't related in any simple way. Indeed the relationships as such are candidate for being the most complex of all relationships among any musics anywhere. "Overlapping" or "cross-associated" or some use of the music business term "crossover" might be approriate.
• Gene Poole (06:44): "spacemusic is not applied to all classical, world, celtic and other music. It is applied ... sometimes to some pieces of music from other genres. I agree with Gene's statement as I have abridged it here. Spacemusic is discovered piecewise among all utilized genres.
• Gene Poole (06:44): "it is applied mostly to ambient, new age and related music " I don't agree with this for reasons Parsifal and I already mentioned, but also that the space music genre range appears excessively oversimplified. I stated a broader range in my 2006-10-23 classic edition of Wikipedia:Space music essay, but I too unknowingly left an oversimplified impression. As many years as I've listened to HoS, I was actually astonished when Parsifal's research uncovered the fact that Stephen Hill consciously programs HoS from among 30 genres as named and listed by him. Milo 20:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Consense

Gene Poole wrote (06:16): "You cannot "consense" anything because there is no such word in the English language." You are wrong. By Google test, there are 105,000 uses on the web, and 1,830 uses in Usenet (Google Groups). There are also 107 uses at site:en.wikipedia.org. You need to do more research to avoid delivering yourself of poorly informed misstatements at an encyclopedia.

Gene Poole wrote (06:44): "Editors cannot expect to have their opinions taken seriously if they propose to invent new words whenever it suits them" While "consense" is not yet found in m-w.com or COED, it is not a neologism, as is documented at Wiktionary:

consense:
Verb
To agree; to form a consensus.
Etymology
Back-formation from consensus.

See the dated quotations shown at Wiktionary. While "consense" has significantly gained in usage since 1995, the earliest date Wiktionary associates with it is 1970. Milo 20:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Most of the references to this supposed word on Google are actually proprietary product or business names. In fact there is no "consense" in the Oxford English, Concise Oxford or Websters Dictionaries, and no listing on dictionary.com either. The recorded use in the 2 sources noted on Wikitionary would appear to reflect the peculiar and unneccesary US practise of taking perfectly good nouns and turning them into mangled verbs. Invented words of this nature rarely enter common parlance, and "consense" is certainly not among those that have - the 107 times that Milo has used it on WP notwithstanding. --Gene_poole 07:15, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Nice try Gene, you lose — if for no other reason than that long-standing North American cross-formation practice causes many if not most new words to enter British English via North American English. Milo 11:56, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Nice try Milo. It ain't in the Oxford. It aint in Websters. You lose on both sides of the Atlantic. Consense is non-sense. --Gene_poole 12:58, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Since you only understand power, I'll put it in those terms for you:
• I have the power to use the word "consense" as freely as I always have on talk pages.
• Conversely, you are powerless to prevent my use of "consense" on talk pages.
• If you claim to not understand "consense", no one will believe you.
• If you escalate complaints about using "consense", you will get the ridicule from other editors that naturally comes with taking a ridiculous position.
• In addition, by complaining about my use of "consense", you will advertise and thus increase use of that North American word in a mostly North American consensus-forming environment, where other North American editors will find it a simple and useful means of communicating consensus thoughts that take more words now.
So take your choice: complain more and thus spread the Gospel of Consense at your own laughingstock expense, or cut your debate-time losses and get back to work on your neglected radio show. Milo 08:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand rational discourse conducted in the English language. You, apparently, understand neither. If you wish to post gibberish theories, using gibberish terminology that's your business. Just don't expect anyone (other than your 2 favourite buddies) to assume that you're engaging in anything other than trolling when you do it. --Gene_poole 20:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Gene, can we please get back on topic? Although I find it interesting, I didn't come here to read about Milo's vocabulary, nor I'm sure, did anyone else. —Viriditas | Talk 02:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links to Internet Radio Streams

I have scanned this page as well as the corresponding archive, and have not found any discussion as to why these links (to internet radio streams playing space music) were removed.

If they were accidentally omitted from the new page, then I will re-create a section for them and add the links back in.

Otherwise, please reply with the rationale for their removal.

Elijah 15:41, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Here are the policies that apply to this question: WP:NOT#LINK and WP:EL.
Most music articles constantly have people adding internet radio station links and other people remove them. Back and forth all the time. If they were not removed, eventually, every music article would have a huge list of web radio links. There are so many internet radio stations now that once a section like that gets started, it grows really fast.
It's different with a small handful of terrestrial radio stations or programs that are historically relevant to the development of a genre. There are usually only a few of those and they don't constantly change, plus they are generally connected to radio hosts or programmers who have also writen about the genre and can be quoted as a reference.
Those aren't my personal opinions, just answers to your questions based on what I've seen on music articles in general. --Parsifal Hello 18:42, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I'll consense restoring these links, since space music appears to be an exception. Due to the new age genres being under 1% of the market, space music streams are rare. WP:EL mentions "a service to our readers", and helping readers/listeners locate scarce streams is a useful service, IMHO.
In the year or so I've been watchlisting this article, there have been few changes to the few linked streams, usually for technical reasons. I'm assuming that since link churn hasn't been a problem so far, it's reasonable to wait for it to become a problem before fixing what ain't broke. Milo 20:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
Good point. It's fine with me if the streams section is restored. --Parsifal Hello 21:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please replace "nationally" with name of the actual nation.

"(nationally syndicated on National Public Radio and XM Satellite Radio)", uses the phrase "contemplative music, broadly defined" ..."

Which nation? Thanks.

--89.172.60.222 20:40, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Clarification has been done. --Parsifal Hello 21:46, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Wide acceptance"

I have restored the statement concerning the self-evident historical fact that the early uses of the term "space music" did not gain wide aceptance. If they had gained wide acceptance there would be sources supporting the contention. In reality there are no such sources because it gained no acceptance. Parsifal's continued attempts to delete this statement as "unsupported by references" is yet another example of tendentious editing by this editor on this subject, by attemting to argue from a lack of evidence, a common logical fallacy. If he wishes to promote a position at variance with historic reality, then it is incumbent upon him to provide references supporting his position. It is most certainly not incumbent upon me to provide references supporting a negative contention. Continued deletion of the statement in question will be reported as vandalism. --Gene_poole 23:43, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

You have "(again)" falsely accused another editor of a thing that you actually do. Parsifal and four other editors consensed that 'broad' range of genres belongs in the introductory paragraph. Against consensus of five editors you tendentiously keep removing it.
If you report such a self-evidently-false vandalism charge, you will be counter-charged, and that will bring your long-awaited WP:COI community ban hearing one day closer. Milo 07:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
The article doesn't claim anywhere that Space Music is a term that has gained wide aceptance - so adding the statement is redundant. The article already states "Space music occupies a small niche in the marketplace, supported and enjoyed by a relatively small audience of loyal enthusiastic listeners." I didn't think your statement said "this didn't gain wide acceptance" and instead implied "this paragraph, in particular, is insignifiant and uninportant to the subject" based on your word choice and placement of the sentence. By showing different usuage of the term over time, it helps show why the term is so vaugely defined now. Denaar 23:53, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The issue has got nothing whatsoever to do with whether the term has wide acceptance in the broader world today. The issue is one of comparative acceptance between early and contemporary usages. The contemporary usage is far more broadly accepted than the early historical usage by Sun Ra and others, and there is nothing redundant about the inclusion of a statement of historical fact of this nature. --Gene_poole 01:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
The article now doesn't say it was "widely accepted" - just that it was used in this way, which can't be denied. Going forward to modern sources that describe space music seems to align in the same way that it was used then as well, reading the sources. Denaar 02:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Could you please respond to my actual comments. --Gene_poole 03:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)



"self-evident historical fact" As a challenged fact that's not common knowledge to the general public, it's considered original research until you provide a reference proving otherwise. I support the current removal by Parsifal and Denaar. Milo 07:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Music of the spheres

I am removing the recently added section on Pythagorean music theory, as there are no third party sources which link modern space music with Pythagoras. This is pure orginal research/speculation which does not belong in this article. --Gene_poole 00:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

"no third party sources which link modern space music with Pythagoras" This is a strawman fallacy – the #History section does not assert such a link. Since no such assertion is made, there is no OR. The #History section is a typical reliable sourced history summarizing progressive similarities to the title subject, which is Space music, not 'modern space music'. Since your reasoning is fallacious, I'll be assisting the consensus editors to put it back in the article. Milo 03:55, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Nobody cares what single-purpose accounts such as Milo have to say on this subject. Other editors who edit in good faith can either provide third party sources to support the claimed link between Pythagorean music theory and space music or accept that there is in fact no such link and stop trying to railroad nonsense of this sort into the article. --Gene_poole 06:20, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I did just check Milo's history - he has worked on many different pages on Wikipedia and not just this one, so I'm not sure why you're trying to discredit him here with a fact that can be easily checked and rejected. Denaar 13:00, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

←Putting aside the predictable flowery language that User:Gene Poole uses to decorate his comments,... I consense with Milo's statement that the Pythagoras information is appropriate in the History section showing the evolution of the term and concept of space music. The content is well-sourced with two book references, one of which is from Cornell University. There is no reason for that information to be removed from the article and I will continue to support its inclusion on consensus basis. --Parsifal Hello 09:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

It's pure WP:OR to associate musica universalis with this article. Gene removed the material for good reason. —Viriditas | Talk 12:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I suggest you check Milo's history again Denaar. His edits are almost completely limited to 3 or 4 articles - and 2 of those are WP policy discussions. Milo is obviously a single purpose account which is used primarily for posting trolling comments, such as the ones above. --Gene_poole 22:16, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
That's not accurate. Milo's contribs show edits to more than 200 mainspace article pages and even more mainspace article talk pages, plus good faith edits to policy pages and discussions. --Parsifal Hello 22:56, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Let's all stick to the topic, ok? This ain't Talk:Milo. —Viriditas | Talk 23:15, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely, I agree with that Viriditas. My response above was simply to correct an inaccurate statement that may have given a new editor here the wrong idea. Now that that has been cleared up, I concur, let's get back to the topic. --Parsifal Hello 23:43, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree too. Single purpose accounts are a significant problem in WP, and should not be tolerated, but let's get back to cleaning up the many mis-quoted references and other factual errors that have been introduced into this article in recent months; misleading content and original research is a far bigger problem for WP generally.
But, while we're on the subject of accuracy, it should be noted for the record that of the 192 edits that Milomedes has made in the WP mainspace (as of today), a grand total of 130 - or a whopping 67.7% - have been made to only FOUR articles, including this one. Interesting what one uncovers when one starts digging, isn't it. --Gene_poole 23:55, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Ok, interesting that you've proved yourself wrong about mine being a single-purpose acount. Thanks, can we get back to Space music article work now? Or are you now going to claim that the number of articles I've worked on somehow equals one? :) Milo 09:28, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad that you accept that the evidence shows you to be a single purpose account. I'm also pleased that you apparently intend to begin making a positive contribution to this article. I guess better late than never, eh. --Gene_poole 09:33, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History

So hey, there's an unusually rigorously cited section about the definition of a term. But I also see an article "Space-themed music", and I'm wondering if parts of the history section would fit better there... not all historical uses of the term will have to by definition match the current spectrum of meanings. Also, it seems to me that some expansion on the development of the term's meaning might make a good addition.

I also spotted some small inaccuracies between what was cited and what was written in the article (eg #57: TD going more rock-flavored implies nothing about the other artists) but I don't really have time now to check 'em en masse... --Tropylium 15:52, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

HI - thanks for your comments. We've been very careful with references on this article so it's good to know that's apparent.
I agree about the Tangerine Dream going more rock is a bit off-topic. The only reason that's in there is that one editor was concerned that without it, there might be a misunderstanding that their newer stuff is still space music. But lots of artists move between different musical approaches through their careers, so I don't see that as an important point to include. On the other hand, since it's been previously discussed and there is an editor who does see it as important, I don't mind if it stays in. Either way is OK with me about that sentence.
Regarding your other comment that some of the history may fit with Space-themed music, I can see a match there. But if so, it should be copied over, not removed, because this is discussing the evolution of the term as used by music that creates an experience for the listener. Some of the historical music does that, but also is "about" space, so could fit in the other article too. There's no problem having it in both places, Wikipedia has a lot of content in multiple articles when it applies to more than one topic. --Parsifal Hello 18:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Hi Tropylium. Mis-quoted sources are a definite problem in this article. Any help you can provide in helping to clean up the mess is very welcome. --Gene_poole 21:11, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
There's no "mis-quoting" of sources; this is an especially well-researched article. That said, if there are any errors, we certainly want to fix them, so any help with that is welcome. By the way, the above editor is the one who insisted on keeping the "TD going more rock-flavored" sentence in the article. That sentence, I think is not needed, but I agreed to leave it in, to avoid an edit dispute. --Parsifal Hello 22:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
There is not only extensive misquoting of sources in this article, but many of the quoted sources are so vague or generic that they bear almost no relationship to the statements to which they are attached, let alone actually supporting them. On top of which the article contains so many uneccessarily convoluted, verbose and/or mangled sentences that parts of it are verging on the incomprehensible. That said, there are a lot of good sources quoted too - but overall the article in its current state is in need of serious cleanup and simplification. --Gene_poole 05:56, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for offering your perspective. I'm not sure what you mean by the word "misquoted" though. The dictionary defines "misquote" as "to quote incorrectly", or "to quote a passage or remark inaccurately". If that is what you mean, please show us which quotations have been incorrectly transcribed, so we can correct the transcription to use the words as they appear in the source.
On the other hand, if you did not intend to state that the sources are "misquoted", but rather that you consider them to be "misinterpreted", that you feel they are not paraphrased or applied to the text in a way that matches your reading of the sources, please show us the quotes about which you have these concerns, so we can discuss them and reach a consensus solution. --Parsifal Hello 07:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


Space music is a niche market, so not a lot has been written about it. Some of the sources are vague or generic because they are what were available after Gene demanded a referenced article by replacing my 2006-10-24 classic edition of Wikipedia:Space music with a 2007-02-05 unreferenced stub essay. (My use of "classic" means both that the essay was published before Gene's time here, and also refers to my description of the classic 1970's form of spacemusic programmed by Hearts of Space on USA public radio.)
Gene cannot actually provide a side-by-side comparative example of even one misquotation, much less "extensive misquoting".
In a 2007-10-03 reversion edit summary, he claimed source misquotation of what turned out to be the Star's End "Berlin-School" quote [21]. I entered both the original and the quote into a text processor with the two stacked vertically. Every word lined up vertically in both, and the character counts were identical. Q.E.D., Gene claimed a misquotation where none existed. Since he was carelessly wrong in that instance, I believe that his use of the term "misquotation" is a nonfactual motif similar to his frequent use of "vandalism" in edit summaries, when he is reverted because he lacks consensus.
The article is comprehensible to me, and I did not write most of it. Gene originally forced a lot of referenced rigor into editing the article, and that naturally led to a formal style that he is now calling "unnecessarily convoluted, verbose". If it were simplified, he would then claim piecewise that the simplified text should be deleted on the grounds of vagueness. Therefore, I do not consense simplification.
He would also use simplification to push his constant POV attempt to claim that spacemusic does not exist, and that all music is now the ambient music that he promotes for his radio show. In the above talk page section #Article content must reflect actual quoted sources, the number of references for each commentator's position, of whether spacemusic is, is not, or ambiguously might be ambient, were quoted, analyzed for position, counted, and the number of each was entered into the article at #Music genres in accord with the Wikipedia policy of describing controversies. On 2007-10-18 Parsifal updated this count of positions (see #Music genres).
In summary, Gene's complaints are consistently not verifiable and should be ignored. He also cannot be pleased, no matter how rigorous is the NPOV effort put into editing this article, because he wants a POV article to read about like that stub he installed on February 5. As long as he is promoting ambient music, it would not displease him if the Space music article was replaced with a redirect to Ambient music. Milo 08:53, 19 October 2007 (UTC) Re-edited to remove incorrect references to profit 09:02, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Just how long are you intending to continue brazenly lying about my non-existent "commercial conflict of interest" on this subject, and the equally non-existent activities by which I am apparently "profiting from ambient music". You've been ranting and raving on the subject at every available opportunity since the AFD for Ultima Thule Ambient Music failed spectacularly - and despite all the huffing and puffing you have thus far failed to produce a single shred of anything even vaguely resembling actual evidence in support of your claims. The main reason being that there isn't any.
I also suggest that you cease posting half-baked psychoanalytical speculations concerning the motivations of those who have the effrontery to question your opinions. Your endlessly regurgitated contention that I hate Stephen Hill for some reason and am bent on his destruction is so preposterously stupid a notion as to defy belief. In reality I respect the guy and know him personally, having spoken with him and Leya by phone numerous times over the years. Additionally, I and my colleagues have programmed hundreds of hours of HOS recordings on our show over a period of nearly 2 decades. Furthermore Stephen has programmed music produced by me on the HOS radio show on a number of occasions, including several times within the past year.
There may be some weird alternative reality where the above is not the case, but in this reality it is - so best you learn to align your opinions with reality - rather than continuing down the path of trying to force "reality" to align itself with various of your unsubstantiated personal opinions. --Gene_poole 16:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
"Stephen has programmed music produced by me on the HOS radio show on a number of occasions, including several times within the past year" So which HoS shows did you produce in the past year? If you can produce a checkable list, my impression of you will improve. Remember, I can fact-check your answer, and lots of things you've said here do not check out as facts. On the other hand, if you can't produce a checkable list, I'm going to assume your HoS production claim is not true.
"You've been ranting and raving on the subject at every available opportunity since the AFD for Ultima Thule Ambient Music failed spectacularly" You have me confused with someone else — I remember reading one previous reference to that Ultima Thule AfD, maybe you mentioned it, but I wasn't there, and haven't read it yet due to not being much interested in what you do elsewhere.
"non-existent activities by which I am apparently "profiting from ambient music" Non-existent? For a long time after you arrived here at Space music, I didn't know that you had a profit conflict of interest as the owning producer of Ultima Thule. After I heard that, your all-spacemusic=ambient obstructionism here at Space music began to make sense, because you make a production profit by promot[e] ambient music as heard on your Ultima Thule Ambient Music radio show. You were media-interview quoted as detesting the term spacemusic, and said that you don't use that term (in your commercial productions paid for by nonprofit public radio), so the same music promoted as spacemusic accrues profit to Stephen Hill and not you. Therefore, you obstruct here, because spacemusic using that term is a rival's-profit concept. You may have other reasons for obstructing the Space music article, but I think your profit conflict of interest is the most important reason.
"Your endlessly regurgitated contention that I hate Stephen Hill for some reason and am bent on his destruction is so preposterously stupid a notion as to defy belief." That thought never occurred to me, you can't produce a diff of me writing that, not once ever — so — are you a liar? Or are you just carelessly wrong as is frequent here? Milo 21:41, 19 October 2007 (UTC) Re-edited to strike incorrect references to profit 09:02, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

READ my comments before insulting my intelligence with misconstrued responses that completely miss the point that was clearly and explicitly communicated to you in plain English.

"Stephen has programmed music produced by me on the HOS radio show on a number of occasions, including several times within the past year"

This sentence DOES NOT SAY that I have produced a HOS programme. It explicitly states that music produced by me has been programmed by Stephen Hill on his show, just as conversely, I and my colleagues have programmed music produced by Stephen Hill on ours - both of which are verifiable historical facts.

"...because you make a production profit by promoting ambient music as heard on your Ultima Thule Ambient Music radio show... in your commercial productions paid for by nonprofit public radio"

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. Unlike HOS, UT is most definitely NOT a commercial production, nor has it EVER BEEN a commercial production. It is NOT and has NEVER been sold to anyone, EVER. NONE of the producers of UT have EVER been paid ANYTHING to produce it, present it or make it available via the internet or through any other medium. NO artist has EVER paid to have music programmed on UT or featured on the UT website. UT does NOT accrue profits because it DOES NOT GENERATE ANY REVENUE. At all. EVER. There is NO "profit conflict of interest" because there is NO PROFIT. Period.

If you had bothered to properly research this topic before working yourself into a lather of self-righteous indignation over "commercial conflicts of interest" that HAVE NEVER EXISTED, and then further befuddled yourself by extrapolating additional false conclusions from that false foundation precept, you could have saved yourself and everyone else months of wasted effort. WP is not a sandpit in which to exercise your fantasies.

Finally, the trick of claiming that you've never accused me of having unspecified "issues" or "jealousies" or other similar nonsense "competitive problems" with Stephen Hill/HOS, when in fact you've done so explicitly on numerous occasions, is downright lame. Given that you and your buddy have managed to innundate WP with a complete mini-encycopedia's worth of talk page chit chat on the subject, it's rather difficult to pinpoint those particular needles in this particular haystack without wasting whole days of my life in the effort - for the sole purpose of providing a rebuttal to what is in effect an act of borderline trolling. Rest assured when I stumble across such quotes in my travels I'll certainly bring them to your attention, so you can spend some time figuring out yet another way of claiming that they say something other than what your prose actually communicates. --Gene_poole 23:15, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's a typical example, to get us going: "Now Gene can say he doesn't agree with HoS's playlist, but then he considers HoS to be his competitor, so his opinion of HoS is to be WP:COI-discounted for deciding what space music is or isn't based on any choice of producers' playlists." This is a clear and unequivocal example of you accusing me of having "competitive issues" with HOS. In this quote you also make several misleading statements that are presented as being representative of my opinions/attitudes - namely, that I "don't agree" with the HOS playlist, and that I consider HOS to be a "competitor". In fact these are nothing more than a complete fantasy construct of what YOU (wrongly) THINK my opinions are. --Gene_poole 00:09, 20 October 2007 (UTC)


• "If you had bothered to properly research this topic" You are correct about that. In the interests of encyclopedic correctness and fairness, I regularly make the same criticism of others, so I accept yours. I want to read about spacemusic, not ambient music, so I avoided reading anything about you, your ambient show, or what you do elsewhere. Yet, if I had done more research about you previously, I could have more accurately described your complicated conflict of interest, which other editors have mentioned before I ever knew about it. However, in the Wikipedia tradition of eventualism, I will make it correct in due course.
• "Stephen has programmed music produced by me on the HOS radio show on a number of occasions, including several times within the past year" ... "point that was clearly and explicitly communicated to you in plain English" Ok, fair enough; I agree that you wrote precisely and I interpreted loosely. I didn't learn until a few hours ago that you are a music album producer and owner of the Archon Music label which may be your for-profit business. So, I understand you to mean that last year, Stephen programmed on HoS radio, probably tracks from your production of the inaugural Ultima Thule CD, Chasing the Dawn: Ultima Thule Ambient 01; and previously he probably programmed tracks from your five Archon Music label releases. Similarly, I understand you to mean that you have programmed tracks from Hearts of Space albums on Ultima Thule.
• "you also make several misleading statements that are presented as being representative of my opinions/attitudes - namely, that I "don't agree" with the HOS playlist" No, I actually wrote, "Gene can say he doesn't agree with HoS's playlist".
• "and that I consider HOS to be a "competitor" Yes, I did say that.
• "claiming that you've never accused me of having unspecified "issues" or "jealousies" or ... "competitive problems" with Stephen Hill/HOS, when in fact you've done so explicitly on numerous occasions," I didn't make such a claim. To the contrary, I do think you are competitive with Stephen Hill, and competitive in promoting ambient over spacemusic. Hill will always be historically more successful than you are in a minor music market, and I think you have issues with that, as you are the most competitive person I've ever communicated with.
• "NONE of the producers of UT have EVER been paid ANYTHING to produce it, present it or make it available via the internet or through any other medium." I can't easily verify that, but it does appear to be likely true as a typical volunteer community radio pattern, and I have no reason to doubt it.
• "There is NO "profit conflict of interest" because there is NO PROFIT." Yes, your volunteer 2MBS-radio station business operations are nonprofit, and not structured like the commercial-for-profit Hearts of Space production business. Therefore, I agree that I'm mostly wrong about the profit part, but given your absolute uppercase assertion of "NO PROFIT", a nagging question of some profit from Ultima Thule merchandising remains — see below.
• "UT is most definitely NOT a commercial production" Now, that statement I have a problem with. 2MBS reads: "Operational funding is principally derived from commercial sponsorship, listener subscriptions, and occasional sales of second-hand books, LPs, and Cds." This means that 2MBS, on which Ultima Thule is heard, is a commercial radio station, though nonprofit, with commercial side businesses, though nonprofit. At http://www.ultimathule.info, it reads in the top banner "Ultima Thule is sponsored by Rosnay Organic Wines". The slick website design with a commercial banner certainly has no homegrown look to it.
Furthermore, Chasing the Dawn: Ultima Thule Ambient 01 is offered for sale for $19 + shipping (USD) at http://www.ultimathule.info/CD2006.html, which also states "All proceeds from the sale of this recording benefit 2MBS-FM and Australian public radio's Fine Music Network.". Gene states in his Ambient Visions interview, "...commercial realities meant we had to cut things back to a single CD..." and, "The project needs to be a commercial success and deliver some much-needed revenue to 2MBS..." Add it all up and I'm left to wonder what is not commercial about the Ultima Thule product line. Ultima Thule hand-in-glove with 2MBS, produces a program and sells things for themselves and for their sponsor. Face it: that's a vertically integrated commercial business, though loosely organized as non-profit. Yet, read on for a question about possible Ultima Thule profits...
• "UT does NOT accrue profits because it DOES NOT GENERATE ANY REVENUE. At all. EVER." This absolute statement I also have a problem with. Obviously, the branded Ultima Thule CD does generate revenue, though not profits since all proceeds go to 2MBS, etc. But under an Ultima Thule website button marked "Support" is [www.cafepress.com/ultimathule www.cafepress.com/ultimathule], where Ultima Thule branded merchadise is sold in a user-owned online shop. This page makes no statement as to who gets merchandising profits from the Cafepress user shop, but if Gene owns the Ultima Thule trademark, it has to be Gene who is earning the merchandising shop profit. Trademark ownership is checkable with effort.
• "WP is not a sandpit in which to exercise your fantasies" Eh? Unless it's an Oz idiom, that metaphor needs more work.
• "further befuddled yourself by extrapolating additional false conclusions from that false foundation precept" Oops, you wrote over the top. I burst out laughing when I read this line.
Stay tuned for the next episode of Name that Conflict of Interest. Milo 09:02, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The facts of the matter are much simpler than you have intimated above.
1. 2MBS is a not-for-profit community radio station. It is required to pay its operational expenses like any other business, and generates revenue from the sale of on-air sponsorship to assist in achieving a break-even financial year end outcome. The alternative - bankruptcy - is not considered a viable operational strategy. None of which actually has anything to do with UT, aside from the fact that 1 financial supporter's sponsorship message is scheduled within our weekly 90 minute slot, and included as a banner ad on our website. Construing, implying, suggesting or otherwise intimating that UT or 2MBS are nakedly profit-driven commercial exercises on this basis is absolutely wrong.
2. The appearance of the UT website - "slick" or otherwise is entirely irrelevant - unless you wish to suggest that all non-commercial entities posess poorly designed web content, whilst any entity posessing a "slick" site must be a profit-driven commercial operation. Such a suggestion is not only a logical fallacy, but is also downright silly.
3. The UT CD was funded entirely 2MBS, and all revenues return to 2MBS. There is no UT revenue, and no UT bank account.
4. There is no UT trademark, although I am the concept owner, as well as being the owner and designer of the UT website and its content.
5. In the past 12 months UT-branded merchandise sales have returned a total of some US $10 profit to my personal PayPal account. After factoring in the monthly costs of operating my cafepress account, my annual profit is approximately -$75. In other words, less than zero in absolute terms.
The bottom line in all of this is that HOS is a stand-alone commercial operation that sells subscription access to its services, and employs paid staff, and UT is not and does not. There is absolutely no comparison between the two in that regard. Your allegation concerning COI was and is wrong in its entirety, no matter what spin you wish to try to put on it.
An full apology from you would be a good idea at this point. --Gene_poole 21:02, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Selection" of space music

The phrase "The term is most often used to describe certain types of ambient, new age and electronic music..." is an entirely accurate description of the way space music is applied in the real world. Replacing it with "The term is most often used to describe music selected from the ambient, new age and electronic music genres..." implies that unless some unspecified person "selects" a piece of music using some unspecified selection process, for some unspecified purpose, then it's not space music. This is complete and utter nonsense, unsupported by any reference source, and and it has no place in a serious music article. Space music is not "selected" by some magic space god. It is defined by specific musical and stylistic characteristics which are described at length in the following paragraphs. --Gene_poole 01:56, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

As Stephen Hill states it, "spacemusic is found within many historical, ethnic, and contemporary genres." That does not equate spacemusic with any particular type of genre; the other references use similar vague ways of associating the term with the genres, other than the very few (as we have already counted in the small minority) who use the term as a synonym for one or another genre.
Therefore, I have edited the sentence to use the phrasing "found within" with regard to the listed genres, in harmony with the Hill reference, and others. --Parsifal Hello 02:05, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
"Found within" is another bad option. It's simply a worse way of saying "selects". Found by who? How? Where? Why? There is no "selection". There is no "finding". It's not a game of hide and seek. There is no reason whatsoever for you to remove the "used to describe" version of this sentence, as it accurately, succinctly says firstly, exactly how the term is used - it is applied, and then explains what it is applied to - "certain types of ambient etc music...". I will accordingly be reverting to that version in due course.
You should bear in mind that this is not Stephen Hill's definition of what space music is, but an overview of a term used by many people in various ways over several decades, and in that respect, Hill's opinions are no more nor less important than those of any other referenced commentator. The article must accurately reflect actual usage across multiple sources, without undue weight applying to one source. --Gene_poole 03:12, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
I like "selected" better too, but "found within" is sourced, so as a sourced compromise you will have to accept it — after passing though your usual 3RR POV refusals to accept either sourcing or consensus. Milo 08:05, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
2 editors "voting" misinformation, original research and non-mainstream opinions into WP while consistently failing to respond to counter arguments is not "consensus". It is an abuse of WP editing processes.
There is no "consensus" on virtually any aspect of this article, and I will continue to strongly oppose the imposition of any changes that rely entirely on cherry-picked sources being used to lend undue weight to questionable opinions, and for which there is no cogent supporting rationale.--Gene_poole 01:11, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, we should try to establish a consensus. I would prefer if active editors keep their comments as short as possible, as that will help keep us on a fast track. —Viriditas | Talk 09:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I don't have anything better to do at the moment, so I'm going individually thru all sources quoted. Crazy? Maybe. :D

  1. It's a list of genres on the HOS site, yes. I suppose it works for illustrating the variety in space music (henceforth "SM")
  2. Cannot check (henceforth "CC")
  3. OK
  4. Seems to be talking more about the diversity of origins than the genre itself.
    • No objection about the claim itself, however.
  5. OK
    • Reuse in the "variety" chapter seems unnecessary, as this bit is about HOS, not SM in general
  6. OK
  7. CC, but isn't this part (the Haydn section) more about "space-themed music" than the specialiced notion of the term?
  8. CC
    • Is "electronic" really necessary tho? Do there exist significant amounts of SM that is electronic, but neither ambient nor NA?
  9. OK
  10. OK
  11. OK
  12. OK
    • ...but is is really objectiv to say what kind of feelings SM evokes? Maybe reword with "said to evoke"?
  13. A bit beside the point really, this quote speaks more about what there is than what there isn't.
    • On 2nd appearence, this seems to be attributed to Hill erraneously.
  14. Sounds a bit clumsy, but OK I suppose
  15. OK
  16. OK
  17. OK
    • The wording gets awkward here tho. "Typically evoking subtle trance effects"?
  18. "Psychoacoustic spatial perceptions" sounds like it's alluding to some "direct" sense of space, ESP-style (?). Better wording needed possibly. I'd thro the word "vision" in at some point maybe.
  19. Same issue
  20. Seems to be unrelated to the claim.
  21. Quote talks representation of moovment in music, not actual sensations. If we are to claim that SM really "typically evokes a sensation of flying", we would need to cite some psychology reserch. Alternately, attribute the claim to Hill or tone it down to imagery.
    • Later usage of quote OK
  22. OK
  23. OK
  24. OK
  25. Probably OK
  26. OK
  27. I see nothing about the term SM here.
    • Later usage OK
  28. Ditto.
  29. OK
  30. Tower doesn't mention SM at all either?
  31. OK
  32. CC in context, but OK I suppose
  33. Does mention SM, but not ambient or NA
  34. OK
  35. CC
  36. OK
  37. OK
  38. OK
  39. OK
  40. Judging by the quite he does not refer to SM as a type of ambient here, he just says that ambient music uses some of the same elements.
  41. This one works, tho.
  42. As does this.
  43. This seems to speak of SM as a 70s entity, while what's quoted is in reference to Rich's own music.
  44. OK
  45. OK
  46. OK. I'm not sure why his description of HOS is relevant.
  47. OK
  48. OK
  49. OK
  50. CC
  51. CC
  52. OK
  53. CC
  54. OK
  55. CC
  56. CC
  57. CC
  58. OK
  59. OK
  60. OK
  61. OK
  62. Does not mention SM, but the description is OK I suppose.
  63. CC. Title does not sound particularly related.
  64. This is the issue I mentioned before, it speaks of TD alone and not the others. Easily fixable tho.
  65. OK
  66. OK for the dates, but doesn't seem to say that the term "SM" only became popular with HOS's syndication. We've previously in the history chapter estabilished several usages for it?
  67. OK
  68. OK
  69. OK
  70. OK
  71. OK
  72. OK
  73. CC
  74. OK
  75. OK
  76. OK
  77. A bit too generic-sounding to draw conclusions about Blade Runner in particular
  78. Similar issue as before. In particular, cf this to the quoted portion: By the late seventies, the band had moved away from its improvisatory roots.
  79. No mention of SM.
  80. OK
  81. OK
  82. OK
  83. technically OK, but appears to use "SM" in a different sense (mostly dance music artists?)
  84. Passable, I suppose... if appearence on HOS is alone considered sufficient for being called SM
  85. OK
  86. As per #83
  87. As per #83
  88. As per #83
  89. As per #83
  90. As per #83
  91. OK
  92. OK

Well, there you go... --Tropylium 15:51, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources comments

Hi Tropylium, thanks for doing that work. For some of the ones you marked as "CC" - I will try to dig up the actual quotes later, so you can review those too. In the meantime, I just wanted to mention that referring to the footnotes by their numbers is difficult because when anyone makes any changes, all the other number change too. So, maybe it would be good for you to post a link here to the historical version of the article you were using when you did your research, that way we can see which comments go with which references. --Parsifal Hello 17:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

←OK, I had a few minutes so I went through some of your comments. I made a couple changes in the article based on what you found, and am adding below a few replies to some of the details.

Here is the version of the article it seems you used for your comments. If this is not the right version, please provide the correct link, because any changes that are made later, change the number of the footnotes:

Article version that seems to be the one used for the list above.

Replies to some points:

CC, but isn't this part (the Haydn section) more about "space-themed music" than the specialiced notion of the term? --- The space theme is present, but the musicologist who wrote that book was not only referring to the theme but also to the sound of the music, as he wrote "a genuine piece of 'space music' featuring softly pulsating high violins and winds above low cellos and basses, with nothing at all in the middle ... The space music gradually drifts towards a return to the movement's opening gesture ... "

Is "electronic" really necessary tho? Do there exist significant amounts of SM that is electronic, but neither ambient nor NA? - that's a good question, I don't know. But I got the word electronic in this context from the Steve Sande article in the SF Chronicle where he wrote this: "spacemusic artfully blended into one-hour programs combining ambient, electronic, world, New Age and classical music." Since he included electronic on his list, I included it in the article.

is is really objectiv to say what kind of feelings SM evokes? Maybe reword with "said to evoke"? - that's a good point, and that change would be fine with me if you want to make the edit.

On 2nd appearence, this seems to be attributed to Hill erraneously. - you're right, good catch. This is the John Dilaberto reference, not Stephen Hill. I've rewritten that part of the text and added a sentence about Dliaberto's comment later in the section.

I see nothing about the term SM here. * Later usage OK - I agree on this. Since the reference doesn't apply, I removed that footnote - but not the content of the footnote since it does apply in it's other location. Only the extra use was removed, the other use has been retained.

This is all I had time for right now... --Parsifal Hello 19:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for doing all that source checking work. That's a valuable contribution to the Space music article.
"Maybe reword with "said to evoke"?" I object to that because someone will hang a weasel tag on it. There's also no need. There are three sources for "evoke" and one source for "evocative". The "evoke" and "evocative" words have long been associated with space music, certainly since circa the UCBerkeley through MftHoS-KPFA era.
"is it really objective to say what kind of feelings SM evokes?" Yes. Spacemusic was singular in this regard because, as music feelings go, the "spacey" sensations were remarked on by so many listeners that the word entered the COED dictionary, as quoted in the article.
"Evoke" means "serving to bring to mind". Listeners do report these effects, and as reported in quantity, that's a statistical objective reality of behavioral psychology. Steven Halpern, Ph.D., did scientific research related to the psychoacoustic effects of space music, and he's one of the sources for "evoke".
The artificial sensation of motion in space is regularly produced in medical offices with "caloric testing". Earplugs are placed with tubes circulating warm and cool water against the eardrum, which causes thermal convection currents in the nearby human semicircular canals. The result is a strong and disorienting feeling of rotation in space.
Speculatively, a biologically plausible explanation for some, not all, of the space music effects might be the effect of drone tones on fluid convection in the canals. If drone tones slightly heat the eardrum and other nearby ear structures through the known conversion of vibration into heat, then thermal convection currents could be produced evoking a sensation of motion, though on a much smaller scale than occurs from caloric testing. Milo 03:28, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Logical fallacy

Arguments from a lack of evidence are a common logical fallacy.

There are no sources published prior to 195016 which refer to "rock and roll" for the simple reason that it didn't exist before 195016.

Likewise, there are only a handful of sources which refer to "space music" prior to 1973 because the term enjoyed extremely limited usage before 1973.

After 1973 the number of sources increases, because usage of the term increased - NOT vice versa.

If people do not grasp simple statements of logic of this nature they should refrain from editing WP. --Gene_poole 05:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying your point is right or wrong, because it's not quite a finished-enough idea sketch for me to be sure of what your point is. Your point is also obscured by analogy to an incorrect rock and roll history, so it's possible that you're trying to make a point that doesn't fit the known facts of progressive appearance of both rock-and-roll and space music.
"simple reason that it didn't exist before 1950" No. Wikipedia says existence of the first exact phrase "rock and roll" was used in 1939; "Rockin' Rollin' Mama" by Buddy Jones, "...Rockin' rollin' mama, I love the way you rock and roll...[14]"
Nor simple in existence by sound. The sound of rock and roll gradually faded in over four decades dating from 1916. In the list of contenders for First rock and roll record, 1936's "Skippy Whippy" and "Hittin' The Bottle Stomp" by The Mississippi Jook Band .... had they been recorded two decades later with full amplification would have unquestionably been seen as rock and roll[9]."
Since the "rock(ing) and roll(ing)" phrases had been used for decades in music, I assume that one could find published references to them that gradually morphed towards the 1950's context.
The same thing happened with space music on a smaller scale. There was a gradual fade in of music and phrase which morphed toward the context which Hill and Turner first broadcast in 1973. The research I did on the earliest use of "space music", encountered a web barrier of German language and subscription music journals access, but dating some kind of "space music" or "room music" to Germany, three or four decades before the 1970's. Milo 08:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I have a dream. I have a dream that one day Milomedes will actually provide a simple, succinct, reasoned, English language response to the reasoned comments of other editors - rather than attempting to bury the discussion in an avalanche of irrelevant tangential minutiae and invented obscurantist terminology. I have a dream. A dream that evidently is not to be realised today. --Gene_poole 08:31, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I burst out laughing again.
"invented obscurantist terminology" Morph? It's in the COED. Milo 09:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Half a page of confused verbiage, and still no actual comprehensible response to the original issue. What a surprise. --Gene_poole 09:47, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
Gene, I'm having trouble understanding why you are invoking a claim of logical fallacy. Yes, to argue that "we have no evidence of x, therefore not x" is fallacious. But that does not seem to be going on here. The problem, rather, seems to be that there is a lack of sources to verify a particular statement. While that may not mean that the statement is false, it does mean that it can't be placed on Wikipedia. To do otherwise would be to violate WP:V, which is official policy. Perhaps I have misunderstood the argument, but as it stands your charge seems to make no sense. Could you please explain it to me in a more direct way? Postmodern Beatnik 22:38, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
The long-term problem editor who alerted you to this discussion has been attempting to tendentiously argue that the statement "These early uses of the term were largely limited to the artists who applied it to their own music, and a few of the commentators who wrote about them." should not be included in the article unless a specific cited source supports it.
In reality this is a simple, uncontroversial statement summarising the actual historic reality, and it is clearly supported by the weight of multiple reliable third party sources cited in the paragraphs immediately preceding the statement itself.
Those sources explicitly show that in the decades prior to the 1970s a few artists used the term "space music" to describe their music, and that that particular use of the terminology was then used by some critics and commenators writing about them. Virtually all of the publicly-available sources on these early usages have, in fact, already been cited in the article. Online searches reveal that there are at most, 2 or 3 other similar sources in existence - and they are not publicly available.
Suggesting that unless a specific cited source supports the statement in question it cannot be retained in the article is specious reasoning. It attempts to argue from a lack of evidence when in fact the majority of the available evidence on the subject is actually already extensively cited - and it all supports the supposedly contentious statement. --Gene_poole 23:38, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

←Postmodern Beatnik, thanks for your clarity on this. It's not about logic, it's about Wikipedia policy. If we used pure logic to make these decisions, that would original research (and I'm not addressing the logic in Gene's argument; there are flaws there too, but since this is about policy and not logic, we don't need to go into those particulars). Wikipedia articles report what reliable sources have stated, and - at least so far - we do not have any reference supporting the statement that Gene wants to include in the article.

For completeness, please check out the section above, with the heading "Wide acceptance". In that section, two other editors agree on this, that the statement should be deleted, Milo and Denaar.

That brings the consensus total to 4 editors agreeing that the sentence is not supported by references, and only Gene alone insisting that the sentence represents what he calls "actual historic reality". Since that does not satisfy WP:V, the statement should be removed from the article.

Since Gene has already accused me of tendentious editing, I don't want to be the one to remove the sentence this time, so I request that other editors please do so. Here is the sentence that needs to be deleted, due to lack of supporting references - it's in the history section, in the second to last paragraph at this time:

These early uses of the term were largely limited to the artists who applied it to their own music, and a few of the commentators who wrote about them.

Of course, if sources can be found to support that sentence, then it can be kept, but so far, no sources support that content.

Thanks. --Parsifal Hello 07:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Now that I understand Gene's claim — that he thinks the sentence is collectively supported by the previous paragraphs and their references - the problem may be mostly one of overgeneralization that amounts to WP:Synthesis. Possibly the first part of the sentence could be limited to what the previous paragraphs do say, and the latter part becoming more specific using my previous edit of "eight referenced commentators". Suggestions? Milo 10:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Parsifal seems very confused. He seems to think that I accused him of tendentious editing concerning this discussion point. While it is true that he has a long history of problemmatic editing, my comment in this case was explicitly directed at Milo. I wonder why he automatically assumed that a comment about Milo was actually about him? Maybe he's forgetting who he is.
Parsifal also seems to believe that an univolved editor asking for clarification on a discussion point is actually expressing agreement with his preferred POV. Why he would interpret a query in this way is unknown.
Finally, Parsifal seems to be seeing editors who do not exist. There is no fourth (or third, either) editor supporting his preferred POV concerning the alleged controversial sentence. That claim is a fantasy.
Common sense and common courtesy dictate that people who do not have a command of the English language sufficient to comprehend when they are being referred to by others, who do not understand what others are saying in response to their comments, and who apparently are either innumerate or delusional should certainly not be editing the English-language version of WP.

--Gene_poole 21:31, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The sentence These early uses of the term were largely limited to the artists who applied it to their own music, and a few of the commentators who wrote about them is probably true, as it is typical for a neologism to see limited application early in its history. For the same reason, the sentence seems vapid, so I would omit it, myself. I suspect there are ambient contextual issues unfamiliar to me. The only logical fallacy I see is the response from Gene Poole to Postmodern Beatnik's question, beginning with the ad Hominem remark. Pete St.John (talk) 19:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not an ad hominem to characterise a contributor whose edit history is littered with numerous excruciatingly intractable months-long disruptive episodes - and whom multiple administrators and uninvolved editors have concluded is either a troll account, a sockpuppet - or both - as a "problem editor". Walks like a duck. Talks like a duck. Is a duck. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Pete St.John, you're probably correct about the ambient context issues. Gene is an ambient music radio show programmer who is on external published record as saying he detests the term space music. Last year he changed this Space music article into something little more than a stub indicating that space music is ambient music. Therefore, I consider his presence here to be a nonprofit conflict of interest (the nonprofit point is argued out previously on this page).
Mostly Parsifal, I, and a few other discussing editors, then researched, wrote, and maintained this present article, about the history of music known by the spacemusic term (1973) that existed before the ambient term did (1978). Since we did not allow Gene to own this space music article with his ambient POV claims, he has retaliated with a long series of ad hominem statements like the one you see above, on this page and elsewhere. However, he depends entirely on not having his statements checked for factuality, he doesn't care what anyone thinks when it's discovered that many of them are not facts, and he engages in casual denial when directly confronted with his non-facts. Example: look through the article history edit summaries, and note how many times he used the term "vandalism" to describe good faith edits which he disagreed. Milo 08:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It has already been established that Milo inhabits a universe that's rather different from the rest of us. In the Milo universe, for example, it is possible to accuse the editor who properly deletes the hundreds of words of uncited original research which you just happen to have written yourself, of doing a bad thing.
Thus, in the example above Milomedes begins with a statement that boldly implies "Gene Poole hates space music"', through the subtle mischaracterisation of the content of a cited reference in which Gene Poole expresses distaste for use of the term "space music" on his radio show. This is followed by a statement which tells us that "Gene Poole deleted the uncited original research I had previously inserted into this article, and over which I continue to have unresolved ownership issues". From these two statements, Milo somehow manages to arrive at the conclusion "therefore I consider Gene Poole's presence here to constitute a conflict of interest".
So, to further analyse the above exercise in Milomedian logic:
1. Milomedes believes that "Gene Poole hates space music".
2. Gene Poole removed unsourced original research, previously written by Milomedes, from the article, in compliance with WP:SOURCE and WP:CITE.
3 Therefore Gene Poole has a conflict of interest.
This sort of tendentious argumentation, posting of personal abuse and and the accompanying failure to accept responsibility for past non-compliance with WP content policies is an established pattern of behaviour in virtually all of Milo's interactions with other WP editors outside this article. --Gene_poole (talk) 12:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Here is Gene's published statement of "I also detest the term "spacemusic", incidentally." There it is — in Ambient Visions Magazine, 2006, a publication favorable to his POV — Gene said he detests the term "spacemusic", and that term is what this Wikipedia article is about. Last year Gene continuously tried to claim replacement of spacemusic by ambient without acknowledging the competing viewpoints. Gene promotes his competing ambient radio show Ultima Thule by denigrating the term spacemusic; therefore he has a conflict of interest and should not be editing this article. Parsifal said about the same thing here:

...thanks for reverting Gene_poole's WP:OWN edit on Space music today. He's been trying to control the definition in that article for many months even though no-one else agrees with him and his meaning is not based on the sources. He runs an ambient music radio show and has said in an interview that he "detests" the term "space music", so there's a bit of conflict of interest behind his campaign to control the article. .... Parsifal 21:53, 10 Sep 2007

To distract from his conflict of interest, Gene is repeating and expanding on his strawman fallacy by putting inside of false quotation marks, statements I didn't make, didn't imply, and don't think. I would like to hear what other editors think of Gene's use of false quotation marks. Milo 01:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


  • I can't tell the difference between Mozart and Stevie Nicks, myself; they both have big hair. But I get the impression from Milodes that "Space Music" can refer to very different things; I'm thinking along the lines of: type SF: "theme music for SF movies, particularly with spaceships"; type NA: "New-age influenced music"; type FS: "music to influence the environment of the listener, as, an audio component of Feng Shui". If it's the case that people are just fighting over the use of words, then I'd suggest making a disambiguation page. The actual statements of three types that I gave above are not, of course, meant to be accurate reflections of musical movements, just an indication of ways that people may be arguing at cross-purposes. It's up to you music aficionados to delineate the types, if indeed there are types. I myself am too ignorant of music to want to parse the arguements for WP:CIVIL, but please all, aim for consensus, not victory. And maybe that will be easier if there is more than one article. Pete St.John (talk) 19:42, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Please read the Notable artists list section, starting at the word "disambiguation" for a discussion of a disambiguation article. The essential problem is that the existance of disambiguation of "space music", "ambient", and "spacemusic" is disagreed among the article's references, and that disagreement controversy is thoroughly covered by the current article. Milo 01:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Many terms of this nature have multiple potential meanings, as well as their common meaning, and creating a disambiguation page would certainly be a good idea. The difficulty in resolving the longstanding content-related issues here, however, can be traced to the fact that Milomedes is the author of unpublished, uncited original research theories on this subject, the proper removal of which he inexplicably considered to be some sort of personal affront, precipitating a year-long campaign of sniping, abuse and tendentious argumentation - the purpose of which is - not to improve the content of WP, but to "punish" me for robbing the world of what he believes to be his unique insights on the subject - insights that are unique, unsubstantiated, uncitable and of no interest or value to anyone other than Milomedes. --Gene_poole (talk) 20:48, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
My Space music essay is yet another of Gene's distractions from his conflict of interest with this article. It is Gene who will not let go of this non-issue.
Examine the comments on the talk page during the actual event of Gene replacing my unreferenced essay, and one can see that I did not oppose his doing so at the time:
Link to classic 2006 Wikipedia:Space music (Milo 08:20, 6 Feb 2007). I expected its replacement eventually, so there was no "personal affront". However, I did expect Gene to provide references for his replacement essay stub, which he didn't do. But it doesn't matter now, because my essay was intended to be a starter toward a referenced article, and that now exists as mostly written by Parsifal. It is almost entirely different from mine, yet satisfactory to me. Furthermore, my Space music essay is still available on the web, apparently making money for its republishers, so the world hasn't been robbed in the way that Gene fantasizes he is being punished for. :)
Gene's COI issues have nothing to do with me or anything I wrote. If I wasn't here, Gene would still have a conflict of interest, and because of it, Gene Poole should still not be editing this space music article. Milo 01:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Specific points of disagreement (or not)

Introduction: Please enter specific points for inclusion, or modification, in the content of the article. I start with a hypothetical sample that is not meant to be taken seriously because I don't know anything about music. Then comment approve or disapprove for each item. Brownie points for comments that do not mention any other editor other than to cite explanations that have already been enunciated elsewhere; that is, for my sake as a newbie at the page, let's start over pretending to Assume Good Faith. I'd just like to see a list of disputed content facts so we can reach a consensus about what changes should be made in the article.

  • 1: Space music should have a JPEG of Stevie Nicks because she's prettier than Mozart.
disagree as far as I know Stevie Nicks has nothing to do with any of the interpretations of the subject.Pete St.John (talk) 19:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
The photo should be one of the late Anna Turner, a demi-goddess of spacemusic. :) Milo 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 2: Space music should not have a disambiguation page because the article sufficiently addresses the differing interpretations of the term.
no opinion as I'm incompetent to judge. Is Acoustic Feng Shui one of the interpretations? Pete St.John (talk) 19:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
agree - does not need disambiuguation page. --Tikilounge (talk) 22:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
agree based on debates already held on this page. I could change my mind. Milo 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 3: This article is fine as it stands and the controversy on this Talk page refers only to other articles, and personal issues that perhaps should be taken to talk pages.
no opinion but I'm doubtful. Pete St.John (talk) 20:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
agree (see comments below, in "Milo's reply" section) (attributed to Tikilounge) Pete St.John (talk) 22:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
strongly disagree --Gene_poole (talk) 04:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
agree Milo 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 4: This article does not place sufficient emphasis on the fact that "space music" and "ambient" are largely synonymous terms.
agree --Gene_poole (talk) 23:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
disagree They're not synonyms. they have some music in common and also some music fits only in one or the other. --Tikilounge (talk) 22:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
disagree They aren't synonyms, they merely overlap. For example, ambient includes noise pieces that are never considered spacemusic. Milo 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 5: The section entitled "Music genres" is inappropriately self-referential.
agree --Gene_poole (talk) 00:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
not sure - I changed it to "Terminology" but that's awkward. Maybe it should go back to "Music genres" because its not really one genre its a bunch of music that all makes the same feelings even though it comes from different styles. --Tikilounge (talk) 23:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm more concerned with the statements that say "X number of sources say Y". This directly self-references the article and should be changed to something more along the lines of "most sources assert" or "a majority of sources say".
That said, I do agree that "genres" is problematic because space music is not a genre in its own right. --Gene_poole (talk) 23:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
I didn;t get that before. I had thought you meant the section title. i'll look at that "X number of sources say Y" part andm reply more later. --Tikilounge (talk) 23:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Adherance to NPOV is required in any dispute, and "X number of sources say Y" is an exactly neutral point of view. That was the correct outcome of this dispute previously, and it is still the correct outcome. "Most" and "majority" cannot be exactly determined, and so are less NPOV than an exact count.
There is no rule against an article referring to its sources, because they move with the article. The self-referential rule refers only to article references to "Wikipedia", because it wouldn't be correct if the article was moved to another web site.
IIRC, one of the references calls space music a "genre of genres". I agree with that description, because it lays to rest the issue of "space music is not a genre in its own right".
"Music genres" of space music is what the entire section is about, and so that's what it should remain titled. Milo 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I thought about this some more and I agree with what you wrote. So I undid the change of the section title I did earlier to put it back the way it was before. I thought about that complicted sentence too to try and figure a better way to write it but everything I tried came out sounding like a guess or opinion so I didnt change it at all. It's awkward but its better than having the info be wrong so I think it should stay like this unless somebody thinks of a way to do it that doesn't generalize it to a guess.--Tikilounge (talk) 08:42, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • 6: Use of the term "broad" in the opening paragraph is both subjective and redundant. It is sufficient to say that "the term space music has been applied to a range of genres" It is not for us to decide what number constitutes "broad" and what does not.
agree --Gene_poole (talk) 02:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
disagree and I'm one of five editors who have so far disagreed. The reason is simply that no music has a broader range of genres (30). Therefore "broad" is objective, since nothing is broader. However, the definitively objective solution is to return to what I wrote in the first place instead of "broad": "30 genres" according to reference #1. Milo 08:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
disagree I found the word "wide" about the range of genres in one of the references so I changed it to that. But "broad" means the same thing and sounds cooler so I think we should put it back to that word. --Tikilounge (talk) 08:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
comment The range seems to be broad enough to be confusing: maybe just two meanings of "space music", "New Age motivated" and "Generic Muzak" are enough to be "broad" in that sense. However, I'd be glad to see both sides concede the point; the word is not plainly harmful, there is some justification for it, and we want consensus, not perfection. We can work on perfection later :-) Pete St.John (talk) 18:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Milo's assessment of above "specific points"

  • I've broken this into a new section so that, if people wanted to edit comments into the "specific points of disagreement", they could conveniently. I would have preferred Milo express himself with an item in the above format, such as 3: It is not possible/practicable for the contributors to this page to express specific points of content dispute. Of course lots of great musicians are less verbal, but some are highly verbal and can consider the situation logically; think about great lyricists like Bob Dylan or Jewel. Highly verbal musicians. Meanwhile I've added an option to the list. Pete St.John (talk) 20:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


Pete St.John, thank you for your interest in improving Wikipedia articles.
May I respectfully suggest that before you try to help, you need to understand how serious is what you are getting yourself into, and it has nothing to do with current article content. Outside of music issues, which you say is not your knowledge, this situation is not one with which an inexperienced editor should get involved.† To verify that is true, I think you should read all of this talk page and the archive page, so at least you can decide whether you are qualified in your own mind, based on what you read of the situation.
If nothing worse, this situation could take all of your Wikipedia editing time, so please be sure that you have it to spare before becoming involved. †To make my point clearer, I urged Parsifal to not become involved, and despite his enormous article contributions, I think he may have some regrets that he did so anyway.
I understand that you and I are accustomed to too many under-referenced Wikipedia articles, about which editors disagree because many of them lack academic research skills with which to reference the facts. That is not the case with this article.
Thanks to Parsifal's superb, graduate-level academic research skills, the Space music article is among the best researched and written articles in Wikipedia, and therefore it requires no significant changes. The content is completely supported by its 91 references and has been checked in detail for compliance with them in a previous section on this talk page.
The final research addition of a connection to the ancient Greeks (music of the spheres) was unfortunately vetoed (see this talk page); so, the article is essentially complete. A few new details may eventually turn up, such as the probable Germanic origins of the "space music" term in the early decades of the 20th century.
Thanks to Tikilounge who has recently put in some nice formatting touchups.
Based on last year's editing and talk, I think Gene doesn't like the article because it doesn't promote his POV of ambient music, and therefore is a type of historical competition for his ambient radio show's promotional POV. The facts do not support his POV, but being in community radio show business (and being similar to other show people, classically like P.T. Barnum), he is not going to let referenced facts get in the way of his promotions for his non-profit UT radio show (though money-making for his radio station), and his commercial ambient music ventures (though small-time).
Since the Space music article is ok, you're trying to help at the wrong article.
The next work needs to be done on the Ambient music article, to explain, using recent decades music history, how Gene and other ambient fans became convinced that there is (or was during a period starting 10-15 years ago) no longer any such thing as spacemusic, and that some/many/most/all musics not having legions of fans, are now/then somehow "ambient" (there are some complicated explanations for this notion). I have researched the outline of that story. It's an astonishing story and it should be told at Wikipedia, though references will probably be as difficult to find as they were for spacemusic.
As annoying to spacemusic radio fans like myself, is that all-contemplative-music-is-ambient idea, Gene didn't make it up. Possibly Gene just uncritically accepted the premises of ambient music marketing campaign hype that started outside the United States — as did probably many other non-USA ambient fans, starting in the UK circa 1989.
None of that successful marketing would matter much now if Gene hadn't tied up so much of his personal and showman identity in believing and promoting ambient hype through his Ultima Thule (UT) radio show. Gene is competitive about everything, so any promotion of "spacemusic", a segue music mix named by HoS, he has tried to stop, or sharply limit here at Wikipedia — probably as a form of competition, because his UT show is a small one (three stations in Australia) compared to HoS in the USA.
The USA has been lead for decades by Hearts of Space (HoS), the original spacemusic radio show on hundreds of public radio stations, with some unknown number in thousands of well-educated (and many affluent) "space fans" (meaning spacemusic fans, not outer space fans per se). Therefore, I was unaware of post-1989 ambient music hype until editing this Space music article at Wikipedia.
A long time after expanding the Space music stub article into my essay, I ran into strenuous and unreasonable bits of UK and Australian resistance to HoS spacemusic. I think some of the resistance is due to anti-USA feeling, which is simply misplaced when applied to the universal language of music.
The marketing rivalry is easier to understand, since the rise of ambient was originally built on the Commonwealth fame of UK music star Brian Eno, and involved making money with difficulty in a niche contemplative music market. Ambient music business marketing naturally sought to expand that market, possibly with a boost from, or possibly at the expense of, a well-established, though niche USA spacemusic market, created by HoS via intensely loyal fans' donations to their local public radio stations.
If I could find enough references, I would tell the story fairly at Ambient music. But, since I think Gene shouldn't be conflict-of-interest editing his is-all-not-ambient POV into Space music, I have no wish to irritate him by trying to tell that story at Ambient music (where Parsifal says it belongs, since that story is about ambient and not space music). Nor does my experience suggest that Gene would allow me to edit at Ambient music. Continuing the practice he began here at Space music, when I began to edit Hearts of Space, he reverted all of my hours of careful editing work with an edit summary charging "vandalism".
If one isn't into spacemusic, it's hard to describe just how popular Stephen Hill is within a limited USA fan circle. But one description is, that fans within that circle want Hill to program spacemusic segues, for our collective pleasure, for as long as he can. There are few other music announcers on earth who remain that popular after 25 years USA nationally.
And 35 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, when HoS was known locally there as Music From The Hearts Of Space with Stephen's co-host, the late Anna Turner. Among the 25 classic shows being showcased during this 25th year, some of Anna's national co-shows are being replayed. This week is Sea And Sky, show #052(R), first broadcast: 1-Jun-1984. (HoS went national and started numbering shows circa January, 1983.)
Though HoS is secular and not at all identified with New Age beliefs, the sacred connection to New Age music probably has helped HoS's long-term image. For example, New Age artist Constance Demby composed an early album titled "Sacred Space Music".
Best personal regards, Milo 14:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The reason no sane person is willing to try to address the many isues with this article is that whenever they attempt to do so, the discussion becomes buried in an avalanche of incoherent, raving, paranoid, abusive, insane drivel from Milomedes - of which the above is a very good example. Until such time as the Milomedes account is permanently blocked for ongoing tendentious disruption to WP there is little point in attempting to advance the discussion here. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
well indeed, I'm not thrilled with Milo's response; it's certainly not succinct. However, you, Gene, could post to the list of specific items, without referencing the incompetence of others, and set a good example of disputation towards consensus as opposed to disruptive bickering. If a few contributors did that, while a few insisted on evading the issues with spurious incoherent spam, or ad hominem or POV-pushing or whatever, then outsiders such as myself would add our voices to help the people working towards consensus get the contrarian agitators banned (if necessary). So here's an opportunity to make a bit of progress, because while I'm an inept musician I'm a very experienced LOUD VOICE. So please try and address the specific content matters, and let the irresponsible agitators spoil it with eristic flammage. Pete St.John (talk) 21:38, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
As I've said before, I'm very happy to assist any effort which results in Milomedes being banned from WP. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not expressing myself sufficiently well. I understand that you consider Milomedes to have been a persistent problem. However, what I would like to see us all attempt just as an experiment is to address the content issues. If it's impossible for any contributor here to address the content, then my recommendation would be to block both or several or all parties from the page. Surely we all want a good article. But I'd love to see someone, anyone, contribute specific points for improvement of the content. I really don't need to see any further evidence of noncontributory materials. We got plenty. Pete St.John (talk) 21:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I don't see what the problem is, other than the arguing. I love this kind of music and the article explains it really well, with lots of references. I don't see anything in the article that's incorrect or off-topic, other than maybe some copyediting could be good to improve some of the awkward places without changing the meaning. --Tikilounge (talk) 21:55, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
That's the kind of thing I'm trying to get at, so if you don't mind I'll copy it into the format of the above. Maybe this will all be simple. Pete St.John (talk) 22:02, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed statement

These early uses of the term were largely limited to the artists who applied it to their own music,[citation needed] and a few of the commentators who wrote about them.

Seemed a shame to have a solitary fact tag from October 2007 gumming up the page. —Viriditas | Talk 00:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lisa Gerrard & Mike Oldfield replaced by non-notables

Notable artists is the most popular section of the space music article for passing editors. However, I recently noticed that a substantial number of names had been added, not verifiably notable as space music artists. I removed 11 of these as non-notable, using a judgment method based on objective data, briefly described in my edit summary:

08:25, 27 February 2008 Milomedes (Notable artists: rm 11 not notable enough as artists by number of HoS programs or <artist>&"space music" Google hits)

Gene then removed Lisa Gerrard and Mike Oldfield, and added Beyond Interval and Diatonis stating in his edit summary:

11:29, 27 February 2008 Gene Poole (delete - oldfield and gerrard are definitely *not* space music artists - this is *not* the HOS playlist article)

The Wikipedia standard for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. I will show that Lisa Gerrard and Mike Oldfield can meet more-verifiable standards for space music artist notability than mere opinion. By these same verifiable standards, Beyond Interval and Diatonis are not notable as space music artists.

While experienced WP editors know that notability is relative and has fuzzy boundaries, most cases can be reasonably distinguished as notable or not so, by blending a variety of objective data with occasional recitation of special circumstances. Accordingly, to provide objective data, I subjected those artist names little-known to me to three counts:

• Count of Hearts of Space programs with the artist played (HoS playlist - search box)
• Count of Google test hits for { "space music" OR "spacemusic" "artist name" }
• Count of Google test hits for { "ambient music" "artist name" }
(Note that Google test results tend to vary some every day.)

Here are the highest values I found on 2008-02-27 (the lowest values were all zero):

Artist         HoS-pgm SpM-hit Amb-hit SpM/Amb

Mychael Danna  37      1,200   1,210   1/1     highest HoS programs 
Oregon         8       11,800  24,700  0.5/1   highest SpM and Amb hits
Vir Unis       7       4,000   3,240   1.2/1   highest number of SpM exceeds Amb = 760
Geodesium      2       889     265     3.4/1   (2nd?) highest ratio of SpM exceeds Amb

Here (by inspection) are the lowest values I kept:

Ashra          0       3,340   1,590   2.1/1   (among?) lowest HoS programs, but high SpM  
Geodesium      2       889     265     3.4/1   (2nd?) lowest SpM and Amb hits (but high ratio)

Here's a questionable notable I kept (not entirely counted above):

Eloy Fritsch   0       798     64      12.5/1  highest ratio of SpM exceeds Amb; 
 "    "        "        "       "       "      questionably notable for special  
 "    "        "        "       "       "      circumstance of album named "Space Music"

Listing the extreme values reveals a boundaries envelope within which a statistical normal of relative notability can be found. For example, look at the highest values and compare SpM hits to HoS programs. By inspection, any artist with 7 or more programs I assume to be a statistically notable "definite keep". Also, I kept most artists whose SpM hits exceeded Amb hits — this is a coarse binary characteristic of whether the web-universe tends to identify artists as being more space music than ambient. The SpM/Amb ratio is a fine count of the same characteristic. (To get the ratio, just divide "SpM-hit" by "Amb-hit" as implied by the "/" in "SpM/Amb" in the table).

Lisa Gerrard   16      972     649     1.5/1   high HoS pgs; high SpM/Amb ratio

At 16 HoS-pgm, Lisa more than doubles my HoS-pgm "definite keep" standard of 7. Indeed, she has the 3rd highest number of HoS programs in the list. Her 972 SpM-hit, while low among my "keeps", is not the lowest, even discounting questionable Fritsch. Lisa also has an SpM-hit which exceeds her Amb-hit by substantial ratio.

Mike Oldfield  2       5,370   9,020   0.6/1   early spacemusic fame for
 "    "        "        "       "       "      "Tubular Bells", 1974

Mike's claim to notability rests on both his second-highest SpM-hit number, and the special circumstance that he was probably first to have a top 10 movie theme identified as space music. (It reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, February 23rd, 1974. [22]) HoS, as Music From The Hearts Of Space, was created on KPFA, Berkeley, in 1973, and was then the world's only standard for contemplative space music. If Steven Hill and Anna Turner said Mike Oldfield was a spacemusic artist by playlist, then he was so, and remains historically notable as such.

Diatonis       0       341     2,050   0.2/1   low SpM/Amb ratio, lower than Oregon's

Diatonis' low SpM-hit and a low SpM/Amb ratio suggests a mostly ambient-identified artist; lacking special circumstance, this is not notably a space music artist. While there is substantial overlap in space music and ambient music as technically composed and played, there is substantial disparity in their histories, public identity, and therefore in the separable public notability of each.

Beyond Interval 0      1       0       -/-     not notable

For Beyond Interval there is only one "space music" hit for this artist on the web. [23] Without some unknown special circumstance, this artist is apparently not notable.


Q.E.D. According to the above analysis, Lisa Gerrard and Mike Oldfield should be restored to the space music Space music#Notable artists list, and (without discovered special circumstances) Beyond Interval and Diatonis should be removed. Milo 09:26, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Irrelevant original research. Please stick to the definition in the article. If an artist has not released an album of "space music" they cannot be listed. --Gene_poole (talk) 09:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Gene (09:55): "...original research." Incorrect for four reasons:
  1. This particular artist notability data is reliably sourced (HoS) or permitted (Google tests), and is therefore not OR.
  2. Calculations (SpM/Amb ratio) are permitted and guide-declared as not OR.
  3. This is editorial research in support of required editorial judgments for list entries. In any other case, plausible OR is universially permitted on talk pages to influence editorial judgements for list entries. Milo 06:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


Lisa G & Mike O are notable artists that do spacemusic so they belong on the list. Beyond Interval is way not notable - not listed on All Music Guide and not listed on Amazon. We don't need them on the list. --Tikilounge (talk) 18:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
The artist list in its current form is exceedingly problematic, as it's essentially a list of subjective choices which doesn't actually match the stated definition criteria for inclusion - nor, in many cases does it match the description of space music given in the opening paragraphs of the article.
The section description clearly states that it is a list of artists who have released some "space music" albums.
I propose that unless at least one space music album can be associated with a proposed artist inclusion on the list, then that artist cannot be listed. Conversely, all inclusions on the list should include the name of the specific space music album/s created by that artist which qualify them for inclusion on the list, beside the name of the artist.
As Lisa Gerrard, Carlos Nakai, George Winston and Ray Lynch have not released any albums that are described by any source as being "space music" or influenced by "space" themes, then they cannot be listed.
Mike Oldfield has released one such album - "The Songs of Distant Earth", so I stand corrected on that one. Beyond Between Interval (my mistake) have released 3 albums on a major space music label - Spotted Peccary Records - all of which have been broadcast on major, nationally-syndicated, internationally heard radio shows, and one of which was described as "no 1 space music title of 2005" by Lloyd Barde. They are certainly "notable" by any criterion one cares to name, and should be included here.
Finally, unless we are going to include birth dates for all artists on the list, it is totally inconsistent to be adding them just to the 2 who happen to be deceased. --Gene_poole (talk) 23:57, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
It's totally valid info to list when somebody croaked in an encylopedia. If it bugs you that there aren't birthdates for all the other people you can look up and add those too that would be cool.
Whats the trip with cutting out spacemusic artists that were played on hearts of space a bunch of times? That's a reliable source. The other band you added "Between Interval", they didnt show in a search before becauase you had the name wrong. Now that you fixed the name they show up but Amazon and Allmusic put those guys under ambient not spacemusic so what are they doing in this page? You said Barde called them spacemusic. How bout a footnote? --Tikilounge (talk) 02:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Consistency is the issue. If you want to look up and insert all the other artists' birthdates, feel free to, but until you do, the list should be consistent one way or other - either all birth/death years are in, or they're all out.
Between Interval are described as space music artists by their own website and by Lloyd Barde, who described their 2005 release as space music release of the year. I'm not sure how else I can state the obvious.
This is not an article about "any music that's ever been played on Stephen Hill's radio show". If an artist is primarily known as creating music in the New Age (or some other) genre, and has never released an album that is either "space-themed" or which anyone has described as "space music", then that artist is not a space music artist. Again, the principle is pretty simple. --Gene_poole (talk) 06:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Lisa G's Mirror Pool is #1 on Stephen Hill's "10 essential spacemusic CDs" published in the San Fran Chronicle. --Tikilounge (talk) 08:11, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Well it should certainly be listed in that case - although it's interesting to note that the writer of the article in question clearly considers "ambient", "spacemusic" and "ambient spacemusic" to be interchangeable terms.

Same principle applies with the others. If there are references, cite the referenced album/s. If not, the artist should be removed. The next step will be to break the list down into artists who are just spacemusic artists (very few), and those who have produced only one spacemusic album (the overwhelming majority). This will give a better perspective on the subject than at present, in my opinion. --Gene_poole (talk) 22:17, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Birth-death dates

The primary reason for including birth-death dates is to encourage scientific musicologists to study the musicians as a group in this musicologically-new genre of genres. The professionals particularly look for who is dead, and the more the better, so that final academic determinations cannot be smudged by later life changes in analyzed musicians' styles. Secondarily, fans of the whole piece-scattered space music scene, who don't necessarily follow a particular musician, are none-the-less interested in learning that's why they haven't recently heard from a once-popular musician.

Gene (06:40, 29 February 2008): "If you want to look up and insert all the other artists' birthdates, feel free to, but until you do, the list should be consistent one way or other..."

Adding birth dates for everyone still living is acceptable to me, and probably of interest to fans, reviewers, and amateur musicologists. However, there are going to be some blanks. Birth dates are not necessarily always available. For example, Anna Turner's birthday is apparently not published. There is also no rush to do this, just do it in the due course of editing. Milo 06:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I like this idea, but I'm also concerned about consistency. As long as we agree upon a standard style, I have no objection. —Viriditas | Talk 13:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notable artists list lead proposals

[edit] Illogical album requirement lead

Gene (23:57, 28 Feb 2008): "I propose that unless at least one space music album can be associated with a proposed artist inclusion on the list, then that artist cannot be listed."

No — that would prevent historic notables who were established solely by HoS radio play of isolated spacemusic compositions. In 1973, MFTHoS on KPFA founded the genre of genres term "spacemusic", referring to the contemplative form of space music known today, and solely established its early notables, before there was any other space music radio show. In that early period, HoS and its playlist is expected to be the sole reliably sourced authority. Any definition that excludes them is unethical historic revisionism.

Gene (23:57, 28 Feb 2008): "The artist list ... it's essentially a list of subjective choices..."

I solved that problem. All good musician lists retain some subjective elements for special circumstances, but it is more objective than subjective following my edits of 08:25, 27 February 2008: Edit summary: "(Notable artists: rm 11 not notable enough as artists by number of HoS programs or <artist>&"space music" Google hits)". I'm open to a consensus discussion on the profile formula, but the historically-necessary inclusion of HoS is non-negotiable under Wikipedia NPOV-history rules. However, as time goes on, other reliable sources become as important as HoS. Including other reliable sources in the profile allows musicians whom the public tend to indentify with "space music" more than "ambient music", but who happen not to appear on HoS, will have an opportunity to be considered reliably notable for this list.

Gene (23:57): "...which doesn't actually match the stated definition criteria for inclusion..."

Here's the current Notable artists lead section:

"This list includes artists who specialize in space music, as well as artists who have made some space music albums, but also other kinds of music. In some cases, they went through a phase of creating space music, with other kinds of music before or after. Others intersperse space music releases with their other projects over time."

Gene (23:57): "The section description clearly states that it is a list of artists who have released some "space music" albums."

No — that's a very selective reading of a secondary condition for inclusion of artists: "...as well as artists who have made some space music albums, but also other kinds of music." The primary condition for inclusion is and remains: "artists who specialize in space music", stating nothing about albums.

It's illogical, and unintentional, to require entire space music albums from only secondary artists. But it's also illogical to propose that all space musicians must have produced albums, which is inconsistent with the concept that the basic unit of space music is the music composition, a.k.a. "piece", not the genre or the album.

Gene (23:57): "...nor, in many cases does it match the description of space music given in the opening paragraphs of the article."

Here's proof that it does — the relevant quote of the Space music article intro section:

"The term usually [previously vetted as "often"] refers to recordings or compositions found within the genres of ...[list]... and sometimes to works found within the ...[list]... idioms."

While "recordings" or "works" can ambiguously refer to albums, my understanding is that "compositions" means unit listening pieces, occasionally subdivided into "movements". But even a selected single movement can be referred to as a "piece" for spacemusic segue purposes, possibly exemplared by Ellen Holmes-produced HoS Adagio programs.

I thought everyone was agreed that the piece was the basic space music unit. Accordingly, I wrote in this 09:38, 24 July 2007 edit summary quote: "... since the piece is more important than the genre...". As the clicher, spacemusic was uniquely created as a radio format (in 1973 on KPFA - MFTHOS), as a segue of spacey pieces, not a segue of spacey albums. Therefore, historically, an album requirement cannot exist for historical notables.

If Parsifal's 16:58, 1 July 2007 construction of the Notable artist list lead inadvertently requires secondary space music artists to have composed entire albums, then that is a mere editorial inconsistency that needs to be changed to the same as for primary artists who can become otherwise notable for creating space music in any format. Milo 06:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

If an artist "specialises in space music" then they must, by definition have released at least one album that can be accurately described as such. If they have not done so they cannot be described as "specialising" in spacemusic, and therefore cannot be listed here. And no amount of babbling about HOS playlists is going to change it. --Gene_poole (talk) 08:23, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Famous composition lead

Gene (08:23): "If an artist "specialises in space music" then they must, by definition have released at least one album that can be accurately described as such."
I've not seen that as a definition, but ok, that's logical for the album era (reportedly in eclipse due to digital download singles). If you combine that logical understanding with Parsifal's editorial mistake in the second clause (inadvertently and illogically requires all secondary space music artists to have composed entire space music albums), then the list lead must be corrected – to be consistent with historic notability arising from composition/piece segue radio play, and regardless of whether those pieces were part of a space music album, some other kind like jazz fusion, or were single pieces from any source.
Here's the current first sentence of the Notable artists list lead section:

"This list includes artists who specialize in space music, as well as artists who have made some space music albums, but also other kinds of music."

Draft proposed replacement for that list lead first sentence:
'This list includes artists who became notable as space music artists for any reason. Some artists specialize in space music. Others may have created as little as one famous composition notably identified as space music, possibly long after it was composed.'
Milo 03:03, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
I do not "consense" this nonsense proposal. If an artist has only created 1 piece of spacemusic then they have zero notability as far as Wikipedia is concerned. We are not here to provide free publicity to nonentities. --Gene_poole (talk) 05:06, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Gene (05:06): "If an artist has only created 1 piece of spacemusic then they have zero notability as far as Wikipedia is concerned."
One hit wonders are routinely notable in Wikipedia. The point is whether notability has been associated with a piece identified as spacemusic, not how little of it there is.
For example, a clearly notable one hit wonder† also identified as spacemusic is Pachelbel's Canon, appearing on 6 HoS programs, including #100 A PACHELBEL CONVOCATION with eight versions, and #200 ROOTS OF SPACE where Pachelbel's Canon was notable enough to be included in Hill's historic collection of spacemusic. (†In the mid-1980's, Ziegler lampooned the public's inability to avoid this music in his New Yorker cartoon, "Prisoner of Pachelbel" (description).) Milo 06:48, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Pachelbel is a universally known composer of music in the western classical tradition. Pachelbel's Canon is a piece of music that is ascribed to the western classical tradition by every musicologist on the planet. The fact that one radio programmer played it on an ambient music radio show in the US does not and will not ever change that. This is an article about spacemusic - a generic colloquial term which has minor historic notability due to its association with a US-based ambient music radio show. This is not an article about that show, or its playlists. There is a separate article already dealing with that subject. --Gene_poole (talk) 07:15, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Gene (07:15): "...one radio programmer played it on an ambient music radio show..." "...a US-based ambient music radio show..." That's not how the Hearts of Space home page describes Hearts of Space radio, rather it's: ...space, ambient and contemplative music.... Certainly, ambient is a major genre component of HoS spacemusic, but it's only one of up to 30 genre components listed at hos.com/choose_by_genre. Thus spacemusic is logically a "genre of genres" (a concept attributed to Maurice Blanchot [24]), thus HoS says so and does play the music of other genres under the spacemusic umbrella term.
Gene (07:15): "Pachelbel is a universally known composer..." Well, then he's certainly not the nonentity of your original concern about my proposal. However, "universally" is too strong for Pachelbel; that's an adjective applicable to Bach and Beethoven. Prior to his hit, Pachelbel was no more than notable among the classical genre's professionals and well-educated fans. After his hit and with benefit of doubt, let's say Pachelbel now ranks as reasonably well-known.
Gene (07:15): "Pachelbel's Canon is a piece of music that is ascribed to the western classical tradition..." Agreed, and the HoS spacemusic segue formulation includes the spacey pieces found within the western classical tradition. HoS classical programs and composers are classified at their genre page titled Orchestral/Chamber (HoS genreID=23). Pachelbel is located here along with Bach, Beethoven, Barber, Mahler, and Hovaness.
Gene (07:15): "This is not an article about that show [HoS], or its playlists." Red herring; the current issue is not one of the article being "about that show [HoS]", it's about the authority of the HoS program playlists as a reliable reference source of notability for the Notable artists section of the article. To the proportional extent that other radio shows do not identify the music they play as "space music", they are not a source of "space music" notability for an article titled "Space music". Since HoS invented the contemplative spacemusic term and genre (of genres), has programmed spacemusic for 35 years, and 25 years in syndication with 831 playlists on their server, HoS is the world's major source of space music and associated artist notability. For the early years, HoS is the only source of notability.
Now back to the point that:
• The authoritative HoS playlist provides a reliable source for identifying Pachelbel's Canon as a one hit wonder of spacemusic found within the classical music genre, using statistics previously provided.
This supports the second sentence of my list lead replacement proposal:
'This list includes artists who became notable as space music artists for any reason. Some artists specialize in space music. Others may have created as little as one famous composition notably identified as space music, possibly long after it was composed.'
Milo 00:02, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Please keep your responses simple and to the point. Others have already pointed out to you that nobody has the time or inclination to read your convoluted essays on this subject. We are all very well aware of your wild pro-HOS bias. Constantly repeating it is not going to result in your original research theories being incorporated into this article. Not now. Not ever. --Gene_poole (talk) 06:56, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Gene (06:56): "Please keep your responses simple and to the point." I responded to every convoluted challenge which you made to my proposal. Then I summarized things simply as you requested in the final section beginning "Now back to the point that". Feel free to reread it.
Gene (06:56): "...nobody has the time or inclination to read your convoluted essays on this subject." Then they are cordially invited to retire from editing this article. Understandably, that was said by an editor who wishes to work on many articles. That is his respectable choice, but such broad-range editing doesn't lend itself well to a detailed focus on academic controversies.
As you pointed out earlier, I work on only a few articles at a time, and my editing style is oriented toward a detailed academic focus, probably typical of the scientific article style to which Wikipedia supposedly aspires for all articles.
Gene (06:56): "We are all very well aware of your wild pro-HOS bias." ... "...your original research theories..." I'm certainly pro spacemusic, and since HoS named the term in founding contemplative spacemusic, I can't avoid being pro HoS. However, I'm neither wild, biased, nor have I proposed any original research for direct inclusion in the article. Once you made the constructive decision that all essay material was to be removed from the article, I acccepted that, and I've promoted only referenced material for the article ever since. What is referenced material can be neither wild, nor biased, nor original research.
We are all very aware that you are the WP:COI producer of a rival Ultima Thule Ambient Music radio show, and you tried to promote it by suppressing spacemusic itself, though attempting to claim that spacemusic is all really ambient music (above, see that yet again). This is a persistent pattern of yours for over a year, and after being presented with dozens of referenced facts to the contrary, you clearly cannot be persuaded to stop your COI. Now you are now additionally trying to COI suppress your production rival, the Hearts of Space radio show, as a source of authority for artist notability at Space music.
As a COI editor, you must have permission for edits in this article, and must defer to all the other editors present. When there are only we two editors present, you must defer to me.
I've given you a fair hearing, but you have failed to provide any quality-answer reason not to implement my proposed new lead to the Notable artist section, making it consistent with all the other referenced facts. I have determined that your reasons for this are COI. While pending any intervening opinion from Tikilounge or others – I intend to implement my new lead under COI rules:
'This list includes artists who became notable as space music artists for any reason. Some artists specialize in space music. Others may have created as little as one famous composition notably identified as space music, possibly long after it was composed.'
Milo 09:55, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Continued trolling will not be tolerated. Nor will attempts to vandalise this article. You have been warned. --Gene_poole (talk) 20:28, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Combination lead

Everybody needs to put on some chill relaxing spacemusic and zone out! For the notable artists, Hill might not be the space music god, but he's a published expert, so if he describes it as space music, that's an OK reference. Music he plays on his spacemusic show can go on the list if the artist is notable and not too obscure that no-one but him is talking about them. It doesn't matter if they do all spacemusic or just that some of their stuff was said by a reliable source that its spacemuisc, thats a good ehough reference. Not all of the stuff Hill plays should go on the list, just the most notable stuff that gives a good overview of the rangeg of styles and how spacemusic can be any kind of muisc and still make the spacemusic vibe.
here's a cool combo version:
This list includes notable artists who specialize in space music, as well as artists who have made some recordings or compositions that have been described as space music. Some of the artists may have engaged in a phase of creating space music, with other kinds of music before or after, some intersperse space music releases with their other projects over time, and some may have created as little as one famous composition notably identified as space music, possibly long after it was composed.
i dunno, sounds good to me, maybe a little long. --Tikilounge (talk) 21:23, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Simple lead

I agree that if the only person who has ever described a piece as "spacemusic" is Stephen Hill, and the overwhelming weight of other opinion generally refers to it as something else, then it doesn't belong on the list within this article.

As I've already stated repeatedly the purpose of the list is to list major artists and albums associated with "spacemusic" - not to document every piece of music that's been played on one US ambient music radio show.

Concerning the above proposed modified paragraph, there is no example of an artist who is known primarily as a spacemusic artist on the basis of having created one piece of music - so that part of the proposed alteration simply cannot be included because it is absolutely factually wrong, as well as being logically unsound.

In my opinion the opening statement should simply read:

"This list includes notable artists who are known primarily for creating spacemusic, as well as artists who have created some notable spacemusic recordings but who are better-known for creating other styles of music".

There is really no need to say anything more convoluted than that. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Isn't the last part redundant? Artists who have only created some notable spacemusic, are more notable for creating other styles. Why not just keep it simple? This list includes notable artists who are known for creating spacemusic. I don't see a need for anything else, as notability is the key factor; we already know the topic. —Viriditas | Talk 14:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree. The simpler the better, in my opinion. Unless anyone has any sustainable objections I propose to implement this change. --Gene_poole (talk) 18:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry but I can't go along with "known primarily for creating spacemusic" or "known for creating spacemusic". Spacemusic isn't one kind of music that people get notable for, lots of kinds of music are spacemusic. Even Hill's published top 10 spacemusic list has on it artists who arent known as spacemusic artists but they made some music that Hill and others played on spacemusic radio or described as spacemusic. Notable artists who have made some works that have been described as spacemusic by reliable sources can be on the list even if thats not what theyre known for.
It'd cool if the criteria could be simple but its not. Eno belongs on the list byt he's not known for spacemusic, he's known for ambient music and wouldn't fit that criteria. Same with Harold Budd whose more like minimalism or ambient, and lots of other artists on the list that don't fit "known for" spacemusic, even though they've made works that have references describing them as spacemusic. The list gives a good overview of the range of kinds of music that make the feeling of spacemusic and to do that it has to include artists who make other kinds of music too. --Tikilounge (talk) 00:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point somewhat. If the artist is not known for creating spacemusic, then they're not notable and shouldn't be listed as an exemplar of the style.

I also have a serious issue with inclusions on the list that only one person has ever referred to as spacemusic. David Arkenstone and Paul Horn are excellent examples. Almost everyone who has ever commented on their work identifies them as new age artists - yet because 1 radio programmer calls them something different we are including them on this list - even though it's obvious that when Stephen Hill says "spacemusic" he actually means "ambient" anyway.

What we are doing by listing those artists here is highly misleading, and gives undue weight to the opinion of 1 person - where the overwhelming weight of opinion of dozens, if not hundreds of other commentators says something else entirely.

In my view unless an artist or recording is unequivocally spacemusic, as supported by references from multiple reputable sources, or unless there is an obvious space-theme to a recording by an otherwise non-spacemusic artist (such as Mike Oldfield's "Songs of Distant Earth") then they should not be listed here. --Gene_poole (talk) 02:24, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple lists and profiles

Tikilounge (00:52): "The list gives a good overview of the range of kinds of music that make the feeling of spacemusic and to do that it has to include artists who make other kinds of music too."

Space music is found within a wider range of genres (up to 30) than any other marketed kind of music. The problem is how to construct a notables list or lists which reflects the properly-weighted center and extremes of that wide range. I can think of two ways to do this.

Multiple lists proposal

One solution to this wide range problem is to use more than one list for space music notables. For example, a first list of notable and primarily space music artists, plus a second list of secondary artists with some notable pieces. For further example, one of the problems with Pachelbel's space music notability is that it rests on only one very notable piece, but it and Pachelbel would more reasonably fit into the second list.

If there are problems defining primarily space music artists, then it would be possible to split the primary list, for a total of three lists. The advantage of two or three lists is that it may be easier to explain and maintain with fewer disputes

Profiles proposal

A standard rigorous solution to resolve disputes over this range problem is creation of a profile of characteristics, the output of which is a list of artists who fill out a bell curve of distribution, which is the shape of nearly all normal center-weighted distributions. The intuitive way of doing this is to find enough test cases, try to pass them through the profile, and see if a few cases gather at each end, but with most forming a bulge of the expected artists at the center.

Statements already existing and proposed are characteristics or tests stated in words, but sometimes it's easier to understand a tabulated draft form, such as I presented in #"Lisa Gerrard & Mike Oldfield replaced by non-notables" section above.

The 1st draft profile should have notability characteristics, or tests, which are independent from each other. In other words, any space music-related notability gets the artist on the list. Such a list will have the least amount of conflict between editors with different ideas about space music. If that list gets populated with too many cases that seem wrong, then a second draft profile can require that space music artists pass some combination of notability tests. If this 2nd profile becomes too contentious to consense, then the first somewhat-wrong profile will have to do.

Both together

Using the multiple list format for the output, the profile tests can still be useful in determining marginally-decidable or disputed notability for each list. The Google tests are particularly useful in this regard. Milo 07:11, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Split the list section out into List of space music artists and have at it. —Viriditas | Talk 00:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
No. Nothing has changed since the last time we discussed this.
• For a hard-to-understand genre of genres, an embedded list is essential for non-academics to understand what is meant by the required academic-encyclopedic prose, using actual examples.
• Unlike the ambient list, the space music article and references will be tightly coupled to the space music notables list. It's difficult enough for regular editors to switch to the article from a standalone list to vet a point made, and even worse to get passing editors to follow standalone list lead instructions based on the article.
• Standalone lists are for long lists. We can discuss this again when space music notables reaches 300 entries like the ambient list has. I'm not convinced that it will.
• Even Gene doesn't want to participate in two versions of the same long-running space music vs. ambient disputes running in parallel, and repeating the same long arguments on two different talk pages.
—So— right in the middle of one very serious and unrelated dispute that we might have been able to consense, you open up an old scab of embedded versus standalone lists.
Milo 03:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Those arguments against splitting don't hold water. There is significant overlap between List of ambient artists and Space_music#Notable_artists such that it would make sense to create a subsection by subgenre in the former, or create a new list split out of the latter. I see nothing in Wikipedia:Lists or Wikipedia:Lists (stand-alone lists) precluding this, and find it helpful to split out the current list to concentrate on list development, while using this article to focus on pure content. —Viriditas | Talk 04:03, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
One of the techniques of trolling is to attempt to confound consensus by writing incomprehensible 500-word essays that no sane person has the time or inclination to attempt to decipher, in response to every minor point of discussion. A simple review of this page makes it obvious just who is doing the trolling here. --Gene_poole (talk) 04:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree that this idiocy in humouring Milo's pretensions has gone on for long enough. Spacemusic for all intents and purposes largely overlaps ambient. Everyone from Stephen Hill to Lloyd Barde to John Diliberto to the authors of dozens of music commentaries support this view. They sometimes use different terminology - but they are all referring to the same artists from within the same musical genre. Wikipedia must reflect this. If Milo disagrees, that's just too bad. He is not a recognised commentator on the subject, and his opinions are of no consequence whatsoever. --Gene_poole (talk) 04:18, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
Gene, from where I sit, part of the problem is the ambiguity. Do we have good, definitive sources that we can point to as "space music" canon? I know we've been down this road before, but let's briefly revisit it. One of the reasons I recommend splitting the list out, is so that Milo can work on it without interruption. If he has the interest and is willing to volunteer his time, it would be interesting to see what he can come up with in list form. He should be chomping at the bit to split the list out of the article, so I cannot understand his objection. It does seem like he's trying to throw a wrench in things, but I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt; Gene, if you support splitting the list out and letting Milo work on it, that would give us time to focus on this article without the list distraction. —Viriditas | Talk 04:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

That's part of the problem. There is no definitive source, because spacemusic is not a genre, but merely a descriptive term that's applied by some people to certain types of ambient (which is a genre). Milo has been trying to claim that spacemusic is a genre because 1 radio programmer in the US has used the term since the 1970s. However, the programmer in question simply uses the term as a synonym for ambient - as do quite a number of other radio programmers and commentators - myself included.

The only way I can see of resolving the matter is if we list only those artists and albums that are beyond a shadow of a doubt either (a) space-themed, or (b) agreed by multiple third party sources as being spacemusic.

I think it might be a good idea for Milo to work on the list as a separate article, to see what sources he can come up with to support his position - however I think he needs to be clear in advance that he must use more sources than just the HOS website to support any inclusions he wishes to make. --Gene_poole (talk) 04:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Under COI rules, Gene's opinion is only advisory, so the rest of us must reach consensus. Let's see what Tikilounge says. Milo 05:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The list makes the article better because it shows the ranges of the kind of stuff that can be spacemusic. Its not just one genre and its not just for space-themed music (theres a separate article about that). Also, spacemusic is not only used to describe ambient music, theres a zillion references already about how music from lots of genres has been described as spacemusic because of how it feels to experience it.
What I dont get is why theres so much conflict about this. Its just music, and its peaceful music, so let it be peaceful. A well known radio programmer is a reliable published source good enough as a reference, why is that a problem. It doesnt have to just be Hill, it could be the guy from the Echoes show or one of the others, or somebody in a newspaper article. The verifiable rule doesn't say everything has to have multiple sources agreeing about every detail, it just says stuff has to be verifiable.
If somebody thinks the list is too long, how about removing the artists who are red links because they don't have wikipedia articles? If they're not notable enough for an article, they're not notable to have on the list. If its important to have them on the list, they should have an article.
BTW I like the combo version of the list intro (not just because I wrote that one) -- I think it's the clearest explanation of how the list works. Multiple lists are too complicated and a list of only exclusive spacemusic artists wouldnt illustrate the wide range effectively. --Tikilounge (talk) 06:06, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
IIRC, the current Echos radio program web site states that they program "ambient music"; if that's correct, their playlists are not a source for this Space music article. I don't know if they used to play "space music". If they did, and historic playlists are available, then those could be used up until their ambient period began. Milo 09:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
As long as there are multiple third party sources stating that a particular artist/recording is spacemusic, there's no problem. If it's just one source - and the majority of other sources say something different - then there is a problem. My suggestion is to remove from the list anything which doesn't fit this pretty simple, straightforward definition. --Gene_poole (talk) 07:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, since Tikilounge doesn't want a standalone list or multiple embedded lists, that leaves a single embedded list with a profiles lead. The "combo" lead that he wrote is profiles in the form of sentences.
Tikilounge (06:06): "What I dont get is why theres so much conflict about this." It's partly because these are words about music, not the music itself. It's also partly about fame, partly about power, partly about money, partly about love, in a personal mix of those things that motivate most human beings. Milo 09:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Now we can remove all the artists from the list who have not been described as spacemusic artists by more than 1 third party source. I'm happy the matter has at last been resolved. --Gene_poole (talk) 10:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Not so fast. There has not yet been a profile notability formula consensed.
• A non-exclusive "or" formula in which any consensed source is notable for listing is the easiest to agree without conflict. (One source "or" any other source.)
• The profile must include a source of "special case", because there are so many special cases in a niche market; obvious listing unfairness would otherwise result.
• A threshold "or" formula in which some numerical level has to be achieved for a source to achieve notability is more difficult. (One source "or" any other source, each with its own threshold, though some sources may not be rationally numerical so as to have a threshold.)
• An "and/or" formula in which some combination of sources has to be achieved is yet more difficult to consense. (This source "and" that source, "or", that one source "or" that other one source at some threshold.) Multiple lists are probably easier to consense than an "and/or" profile formula.
Milo 20:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Specific artist notabilities

[edit] Peter Michael Hamel

15 HoS programs 700, 623, 617, 530, 451, 270, 247, 245, 207, 144, 117, 099, 053, 038, 011,

Google tests (2008-03-08): 378 for "Peter Michael Hamel" "space music" 300 for "Peter Michael Hamel" "ambient music" 1.2/1 SpM/Amb ratio

PMH may not have a personal web site.

PMH memoir by Constance Demby, artist-composer of "Sacred Space Music": http://www.constancedemby.com/review.pmh.html "Double Bill with Peter Michael Hamel, Berkeley, CA" "Peter Michael Hamel ranks as one of the best-known and most successful German composers of his generation." .... "Steven Halpern was there, Steven Hill & Anna Turner from Hearts of Space were there, as were so many others interested in consciousness-raising music." .... "That period in the '80s when our genre was being birthed was a potent and exciting time."

Peter Michael Hamel (b. 1947) is a perfect example of why the Hearts of Space playlist cannot be excluded under NPOV as a independent spacemusic notability source. PMH was a house-capacity draw in the SF Bay area in the early days before the rest of the world knew about spacemusic. In a solo organ concert, he filled the RCC Cathederal in downtown San Francisico. Yet today, as shown by the low Google hit numbers, little more on the web than the HoS playlist retains the magnitude of PMH's early notability.

Accordingly, I'll be restoring this list deletion. Milo 20:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

If you can support the insertion with multiple third party sources (ie not just HOS playlists), do so. If you cannot, do not re-insert it. Constance Demby's comments refer to "consciousness-raising" - ie New Age - music and are therefore not relevant in this context. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:07, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
For FYI of other editors, I just cited Demby as collaborative evidence of PMH's notability, because there is so little other web information about PMH's great importance in that early scene. Demby used that term "space music" in the title of one of her albums. Demby also mentions Stephen Hill as actually performing with herself and PMH.
The 15 HoS programs are a final early-years authority on PMH's spacemusic notability since they created the concept and inclusively defined it by example. However, it's also a matter of record that HOS #099 ORGANUM, 1986 was entirely a PMH broadcast, which qualifies under Wikipedia:Notability (music)#Criteria for musicians and ensembles: "12. Has been the subject of a half hour or longer broadcast across a national radio or TV network."
Milo 04:29, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Burmer

27 HoS programs 794, 786, 527, 452, 354, 352, 326, 297, 278, 271, 234, 225, 213, 197, 182, 181, 179, 169, 145, 125, 119, 113, 091, 064, 053, 045, 027.

1,520 for "Richard Burmer" "space music" OR "spacemusic". 1,240 for "Richard Burmer" "electronic music" 867 for "Richard Burmer" "ambient music". 1.8/1 SpM/Amb ratio

His official memorial web site is http://www.richardburmer.com

Richard Burmer (1955-2006) is another example of why the Hearts of Space playlist cannot be excluded under NPOV as a independent spacemusic notability source. Burmer is another of the early greats of spacemusic with 27 HoS programs. Yet his albums were, until after his death, out of print for many years, thus generating relatively fewer hits in the web era. His Google test SpM/Amb hit ratio is 1.8/1, revealing him as publicly identified more with spacemusic than with ambient. He was a professional engineer/synth programmer, and his family's memorial website associates him with "electronic music", yet his Google test hits for "electronic music" are less than for "space music"/"spacemusic". His web site and HoS also mention that he worked with other spacemusic notables like Kevin Braheny and Steve Roach.

While 27 HoS programs establishes that nothing else is needed to establish Burmer's early spacemusic notability, to nip quibbling, HOS #794 ACROSS THE VIEW, 2007 was a Richard Burmer retrospective broadcast, which qualifies under Wikipedia:Notability (music)#Criteria for musicians and ensembles: "12. Has been the subject of a half hour or longer broadcast across a national radio or TV network."

Accordingly, I'll be restoring this list deletion. Milo 04:29, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] talking about the article on other pages

What is this for?

Stuff about the article should be talked about right here where people don't have to hunt around for it.

To reply to what was written over there, I looked at List of ambient artists and the reason it has so much overlap with the list in this article is not because space music is the same as ambient music at all (it's not the same). The ambient list overlaps too much because it has a googleplex of artists on it that are totally not ambient, like Loreena McKinnet for example. That other list needs to have lots of artists deleted that dont make any sense being on there.

That ambient list is totally unreferenced so it doesn't prove anything about anything, but the list on here is partly referenced and people are adding more references as we go along. --Tikilounge (talk) 21:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

List of ambient artists lists all artists that have been played on multiple major ambient music radio shows, including Echoes, Hearts of Space, Ultima Thule, Star's End and Musical Starstreams, and which have been written about by countless reviewers and commentators on the subject of ambient. It includes all subgenres and stylistic variations of the genre and is easily referencable. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
That's not what it says on the list page for criteria, it says this:
This is a list of ambient music artists. This includes artists who have either been very important to the genre or have had a considerable amount of exposure (such as in the case of one that has been on a major label, but not limited to such). This list does not include little-known local artists.
Nothing about Echoes or any other radio station, just "ambient artists". Ask anyone editing the Ambient music page if they think these people from the list make ambient music: William Ackerman, Enya, Craig Chaquico, Loreena McKennitt, Mannheim Steamroller. Most of those are new age and not ambient at all. That list is a mess and needs massive cleanup and it has nothing to do with the spacemusic article anyway. --Tikilounge (talk) 22:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
If it has nothing to do with this article, why did you raise the matter in the first place? All of the above artists are "ambient" to one degree or other. Hundreds of reputable commentators agree. Major radio programmers are reputable commentators. If you believe the weight of opinion says something different the onus is on you to provide credible sources to support your claims. --Gene_poole (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Intro paragraph change

I have modified the strange and unneccessarily convoluted wording of the second sentence of the opening paragraph from:

The term usually refers to recordings or compositions found within the genres of ambient, new age and electronic music; and sometimes to works found within the western classical, world, Celtic, and experimental idioms.

to:

The term usually refers to certain types of ambient, new age and electronic music, and sometimes to pieces created by artists working in the western classical, world, Celtic, and experimental idioms.

Music is not "found". It is created. --Gene_poole (talk) 21:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about it not being found, that's what radio programmers do, they find music,and that's how the name spacemusic got stuck onto some kinds of music that was played on some shows. But either way, spacemusic is not a type of music, its a descriptive term that describes pieces of music from lots of genres. So I modified the sentence to this, and because you didnt like the word found I left that out:
The term is most often used to describe some compositions or recordings categorized in the ambient, new age and electronic music genres, and sometimes to describe works in the western classical, world, Celtic, and experimental idioms.
That says it without blurring the boundaries between a descriptive term and a genre or a subgenre. You wrote yourself in another comment that its not a genre so I hope you agree about this. --Tikilounge (talk) 22:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
There is no need for sentences to use weasel wording, or be any more complex than necessary. --Gene_poole (talk) 23:30, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Gene (21:32): "Music is not "found". It is created." Since you lack a reference, and "found within" has one, your opinion is original research.
This has already been discussed at #"Selection" of space music. This issue was settled and remains settled, due to the fact that of the phrases proposed, only "found within" has a reference, at:

HoS.com History (left column): "Any music with a generally slow pace and space-creating sound image can be called spacemusic. Generally quiet, consonant, ethereal, often without conventional rhythmic and dynamic contrasts, contemplative music is found within many historical, ethnic, and contemporary genres." [emphasis added]

Milo 01:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

If you wish to suggest that music is "found" rather than created, please provide supporting references from multiple reliable third party sources that support your POV. Otherwise, cease disrupting this discussion. --Gene_poole (talk) 01:46, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Only one reference is needed for an article statement, and I provided it. Your claimed statement has zero references and is therefore original research. Milo 04:37, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
In order to avoid issues of undue weight, statements in support of non-mainstream opinions must be supported by multiple reliable sources. The onus is on you to provide multiple reliable sources to support your non-mainstream original research contention that music is "found" rather than created. --Gene_poole (talk) 04:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I checked your cite (WP:UNDUE redirects to WP:NPOV) for "non-mainstream" and it's not there. Neither is "multiple reliable sources". If you're going to make a claim of policy, you'll have to use policy terms and policy cites, since no one can be expected to guess at what you mean. Milo 05:26, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I suggest you read the policy again. The following specific statements are of relevance to you, with highlights added by me for your benefit:

NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth does not mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, a view of a distinct minority.

We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.

Undue weight applies to more than just viewpoints. Just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements. An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements.

Minority views can receive attention on pages specifically devoted to them—Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. But on such pages, though a view may be spelled out in great detail, it must make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint, and must not reflect an attempt to rewrite majority-view content strictly from the perspective of the minority view.

If you are able to prove something that few or none currently believe, Wikipedia is not the place to premiere such a proof. Once a proof has been presented and discussed elsewhere, however, it may be referenced. --Gene_poole (talk) 05:38, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, the first clause you bolded reads, "...all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source...". I've given you my reliable source reference for "found within". Where's your reference for your claimed statement? Milo 06:27, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Your assertion is an extreme minority viewpoint supported by 1 source. It cannot be included in the article. --Gene_poole (talk) 06:32, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
• For the speculative claim of "extreme minority viewpoint" to be considered, there has to be another significant viewpoint that has been published by a reliable source to make a comparison.
• Let the record show that I have challenged† your edit replacing referenced "found within", and on my direct request (Milo 06:27, 9 Mar 2008) you have failed to provide any competing referenced viewpoint for comparison.
• Therefore "found within" is currently the only viewpoint, and as the only viewpoint, it is the majority viewpoint. No requirement exists for more than one source to reference it.
• Accordingly "found within" will remain in the intro text as a referenced way that spacemusic is discovered.

†Wikipedia:No original research#Reliable sources: "Any material that is challenged ... must be supported by a reliable source. ... The only way you can show that your edit is not original research is to produce a reliable published source that contains that material."

Milo 06:25, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gerrard etc as spacemusic

I moved the following here from my talk page cuz its about the article so this is where it belongs not on a user's talk page. --Tikilounge (talk) 08:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. I really have a serious issue with your continued adding of Lisa Gerrard, Oregon and others to the spacemusic list on the basis of a single source. Unlike others on the list these artists have not created any space-themed recording, nor does anyone apart from one source refer to them as space music. If lots of other comentators refer to them as something other than spacemusic and one source says something else, we cannot give undue weight to that one source. Referring to them as spacemusic artists is misleading and wrong. We cannot continue promoting that notion in WP. --Gene_poole (talk) 00:02, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
I checked out WP:Verifiability and WP:RS. They dont require "multiple sources", they require "a reliable source". You wrote on this page (Gene_poole 23:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)): Major radio programmers are reputable commentators. -- I agree. Hill programs a radio show on hundreds of stations, for decades, so he qualifies. He describes the Mirror Pool as spacemusic, that's a valid reference.
Plus his top-10 spacemusic list including the Mirror Pool was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, inside an article by a journalist. Reliable source quoted by a reliable source = double reliable!
Undue weight doesnt apply. Do you have a quote from any source saying that album "is not space music"? Sure there people describe Gerrard's music in other ways but thats not a conflict because lots of music is ambient or classical or whatever and also described as spacemusic too. Those are not mutually exclusive, and no-one is quoted saying that the Mirror Pool is not spacemusic, so theres no undue weight. --Tikilounge (talk) 08:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
In a case where 1 person says 1 thing and a whole bunch of other people say something else, we can't simply use the 1 source that supports the 1 person. Undue weight directly applies in this instance.
It should also be pointed out that the SF Chronicle article is about ambient music, as the title indicates: The sky's the limit with ambient music. The article then goes on to say This is the sound of spacemusic, also known as ambient, chill-out, mellow dub, down-tempo ... call it what you will., showing that the author uses the terms "ambient" and spacemusic" (and the others) completely interchangeably within the article.
Which is precisely the point I've been making for the past two years, namely the what Stephen Hill terms "spacemusic", most other commentators call "ambient". In almost all cases everyone is describing the same music by the same artists. --Gene_poole (talk) 19:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Undue weight - Where's the reference saying that Gerrard is not space music? Haven't seen one of those yet. The guy that wrote that article agrees with you about space ambient, thats cool, he's a reliable source. His opinion is in the article with a footnote or two. Lots of other sources dont think like he does though and theres a zillion references about them too. Check out the NPOV page, all the reliable sources get their say. --Tikilounge (talk) 23:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


• Undue weight can only apply to contradictory references. There are none. It isn't contradictory to her spacemusic notability if Gerrard is also notable for ambient. That concept is well-known as crossover. For example, Dolly Parton is notable for her music crossover as both country and pop.
• If reliable Hill/HoS says Gerrard is Top-10 spacemusic, then that issue is affirmed for Gerrard's spacemusic notability. There is no requirement for more than one notability reference.
• Spacemusic's distinction from ambient is settled by the exact weight of counted references in the article: 6 to 1 (with 1 more ambiguous). The majority view is further confirmed by the Google tests I've posted here. The 6 to ~1 majority opinion is that "spacemusic"/"space music" has an independent existence in public perception. Until and unless you find a lot more references, the independence of spacemusic issue remains closed by WP:Verifiability. Milo 00:09, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The onus is not on me to prove a negative (ie that Lisa Gerrard is not a spacemusic artist). The onus is on you to demonstrate why you believe WP should promote the contention that Lisa Gerard is a spacemusic artist on the basis of *1* source (in which spacemusic = ambient in any case), when the overwhelming weight of alternative opinion does not support that position, and in fact makes it abundantly clear that it represents a 1-off eccentricity:
--Gene_poole (talk) 02:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
At the moment, the onus is on you to accept or deny the industry standard Crossover_(music) concept. If you do accept it, then notabilities are independent, and Gerrard's spacemusic notability is established by only one reliable reference. If you don't accept it, then your unreferenced opinion of the music industry structure is original research and will be ignored for article purposes.
Gene (02:32): "Lisa Gerrard" +ambient - 70,200 results"
Oh, right -- I can double beat that last one with an equally unqualified search term:
155,000 for "Lisa Gerrard" "space"
63,400 for "Lisa Gerrard" "ambient"
2.4/1 SpM/Amb ratio
But a Google USA search (you are using Google AU) within the last hour, using unambiguous parity search terms, has results like this:
1,230/1,490 for "Lisa Gerrard" "space music"/"spacemusic" (average 1360)
647 for "Lisa Gerrard" "ambient music"
2.1/1 SpM/Amb ratio (averaged)
(Time saver hint for everyone, just copy & paste directly from the Google search result bar)
Milo 05:50, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
Please use recognisable English when posting messages to WP talk pages, lest your ramblings be mistaken for trolling. --Gene_poole (talk) 05:54, 11 March 2008 (UTC)