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"Musical Artists" and "Composers"

Hi,

I think the main issue we should solve is: how does this project relate to WikiProject Composers? Composers are musicians/musical artists, so is it the intent for this to be a super-project of Composers? --Gennaro Prota 23:06, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a good question, and one I hadn't considered. But it makes perfect sense to me to have this as a belated "parent" project to WikiProject Composers. I've never looked at that project so I don't know what kind of guidelines they have, but it's probably a good idea, we can probably even get some good ideas from that project. B. Mearns *, KSC 16:28, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, after a review of that project, I'm not really convinced that there's as much overlap as originally suggested. Perhaps this project is named poorly, but it's meant to be more about performing musicians. I'm certainly not suggessting that composers aren't artists, but as I said, maybe that's just a bad name for this project.
Incidentally, the reason for the name is that when I originally proposed the project, it was meant to include both solo musicians and bands, so "Musical Artists" seemed to cover both of those things. But now I'm really regretting it. I'll pick this up in a new discussion below

B. Mearns *, KSC 17:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Moving the project

As it turns out "Musical Artists" is a pretty crappy name for this project which is meant to include solo performing artists. However, the name can imply a number of other things, for instance composers and lyricists. Therefore, I'd like to propose that the entire project be moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians. It'll be a bit of an effort because there's so many sub pages and templates and other references to the current title, but I'm willing to go through and do it if I can get some support for it. B. Mearns *, KSC 17:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good - also, the category for articles should be changed to WikiProject Musicians articles, in my opinion -- getcrunk juice contribs 00:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Pardon me, I fail to see how this solves the original problem: composers are musicians. --Gennaro Prota 01:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
True, but in this context, "musicians" implies (at least to me, and for the purpose of this project) performance musicians. I'll be the first to admit the distinction is a little vague, but I think it's a big improvement over the current name. B. Mearns *, KSC 02:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
IIUC, you mean "singers or bands"? Thus why not "Singers and Bands"? This would still pose a problem, as there are a lot of singer-songwriters, but at least is IMHO much clearer. (Just to clarify further: Andrés Segovia was, as I understand the expression, a "performance musician" as well, but not a singer) --Gennaro Prota 15:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
So this project only applies to solo artists now and not groups or any other individuals? It seems a shame to limit the scope there. Flower party■ 16:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
This begins to be a total confusion. Who are "solo artists"? Maybe even painters and sculptors? What if they have an assistant? :) I don't see why we can't use the term "singer", really... In any case I'm with you: singers and bands should be treated uniformly and in the same project. --Gennaro Prota 17:26, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
"Singer" is far too specific. This started out as an "all-encompassing" project for solo musicians and bands, but at some point that changed, and now I can't even remember why. If everyone wants, we can generalize it to include all performance musicians; solo, or in a group. But I still don't think it should include composers, lyricists, etc., who are certainly musicians and artists in their own right, but not the purpose of this project. But at any rate, it's renamed to WikiProject Musicians, whether that clears things up or makes them more confusing, I really don't know. B. Mearns *, KSC 21:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
This may be just me but a lyricist is not (per se) a musician. Musician is someone who is (professionally) able to play a musical instrument, whether he composes music or not. He *may* be a music composer. Not all singers are musicians and most musicians aren't singers. Not many musicians are also lyricists but many of those who are singer-songwriters. This is my understanding of the terms. Please correct me if I'm wrong. --Gennaro Prota 10:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
The term is probably amibigous, but for the sake of the project, I'll propose the following:
  • A musician is someone who performs music professionally, i.e., singer an instrument players. This includes those who do so individually (solo musicians) and those who do so within a band or other ensemble
  • A singer is a specific kind of musician, it's a musician who'se primary "instrument" for performance is their vocal chord, i.e., they sing.
  • A musical artist is anyone who does anything creative or otherwise artistic with music. This includes musicians as described above, lyricists, composers, probably even conductors and producers.
This project is focused on the first bullet, which of course also includes the second bullet, as a subset of the first. B. Mearns *, KSC 14:25, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
No offense intended but words have their meaning and people will tend to use that, not yours. You will have a hard time convincing anyone that a composer is not a musician. And we'll have thousands of bona fide people who will try using this project's guidelines and infoboxes for music composers. BTW, we are in the paradoxical situation that if someone begins composing, say, after having recorded 3 albums as a solo singer we will have to remove him from the musician category!! (Whereas he has actually done a step *forward* in the musical career). Believe me, I don't want to nag you, but this naming issue is important :-( --Gennaro Prota 00:17, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm not trying to propose new definitions, I was indicating my understanding of the words. The words are somewhat vague, but I believe the list I gave above represents the most common usage of the terms in the English language. As far as people putting composers into this project, first, I don't think it'll really happen all that much, but we can wait and see. Second, if it does, it's really not a big deal. No matter what we name the project, people are still going to inadvertently misuse or misapply it. That's why we have the project page, and particularly the "Scope" section as the very first section, so people can get a better understanding of what is supposed to be part of the project and what isn't. I think "Musicians" is about as appropriate of a term for this project as the English language can muster, and you'll notice that it did receive support above, and that no-one else has taken issue with it. That said, if you can come up with a better term that people can come to a consensus over, and if you are willing to go through and make all the changes for it (that includes all the templates, redirects, categories, and sub projects), I have no problem with that.
As for our apparent paradox, I really don't think that's an issue whatsoever. Pages can be in mutliple categories, and if someone is known both for the studio recordings as a solo musician, and as a composer, there's no reason they can't be in categories to reflect both, and furthermore, there's no reason the article can't be part of this project, since it is about a professional musician as well as a composer. The latter doesn't qualify it for this project, but the former does. B. Mearns *, KSC 16:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

redundant?

No offense, but isn't this largely redundant and overlapping with Wikipedia:Featured Music Project?--Urthogie 20:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess, but this is more general. This project isn't solely concerned with making articles featured, it's much more about organization. However, we should probably just use the guidelines of that project for our own article guidelines. B. Mearns *, KSC 21:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I'd suggest making sure it doesn't overlap, and make sure that both projects link to one another.--Urthogie 08:28, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Band/Performance Musician infobox?

While I have seen a few infoboxes added to bands' articles recently, I haven't been able to find a definitive infobox template to be used for bands or performance musicians. Is there one yet? If not, work should probably begin on one. --Switch 12:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Well the current standard is generally {{Infobox band}}, but there is currently some discussion going on in the Article guidelines sub project for a new infobox to use for both musical groups and individual musical artists. B. Mearns *, KSC 13:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

self reference

I noticed Category:WikiProject Musicians articles on an article. Isn't this a self reference of the type cautioned against by Wikipedia:Avoid self-references? I suggest talk pages be added to this category, rather than articles. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I had a question about whether or not this category was appropriate back when the project was just a pre project, and no-one said anything so I just left it as is, but you make a good point. I'll wait a few days to see if anyone else has thoughts, than make the changes to the guidelines, as well as to the pages currently in the category. B. Mearns *, KSC 15:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Although since this project has such a widely defined scope I imagine the category could grow very large if added to all relevant talk pages. Surely it's already possible to find the articles that are within the scope of this project by browsing cat: Music? Flower party? 16:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I suppose the original reason for the category was more so that Project participants could beeter keep track of progress and what articles had already been reviewed or at least acknowledged, not so much for people to find articles about musicians. B. Mearns *, KSC 16:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
If "The purpose of this project is to provide guidelines for wikipedia articles about individual musicians" then why do you need to tag articles anyway? There must be thousands and thousands of them. It's way beyond the capabilities of a small group of people to write, maintain, classify, catalogue such a large number of articles. --kingboyk 15:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Groups by state

I'm still new to wikipedia, and not sure where this belongs, but there are several redundant lists categorizing musicians by state. For example

Is it useful to distinguish "bands" from "musicians" from "music (in general)"? Or would it be better to combine the best qualities of these lists into one entry format? I'm not sure where to build a concensus because most of the talk pages for these lists are empty. Hoof Hearted 18:33, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

An invitation to all members of this project

WikiProject Arts
Announcing the creation of WikiProject Arts, an effort to create a collaboration between all arts projects and artistically-minded Wikipedians in order to improve arts coverage. If you think you can help, please join us!

HAM 18:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Music samples guideline

I proposed a new guideline concerning Music and Song samples in Wikipedia:Music samples. It stills a draft. Your input is appreciated. CG 20:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Prince (musician)

I've nominated this article for a minor featured article review because requests for references and expansion of stub sections have gone unacted upon. Hopefully someone from this project can help. savidan(talk) (e@) 22:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Expert help needed!

Hi all -- we've got a bunch of lingering musician names over at Wikipedia:Articles requested for more than a year. Anyone want to take a shot at (a) writing an article, (b) redirecting if it's covered elsewhere, or (c) delete if it doesn't warrant a full-fledged article? Help is appreciated! Bookgrrl 23:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Want to join

I've never been part of any "project" or "portal" or however it works, but I think I'd like to be able to communicate in a central place about a particular idea that I have, as well as help out in various ways concerning this subject of musicians and music. Off and on over the past week or so I've been trying to find examples for "Rock Family Trees" here on Wikipedia. I've commented in a couple different talk pages about what I've found and I've even created a "line-ups" listing in one band's article, which was based on another band's "line-ups" listing. So, please help me to become involved. You see, I don't quite understand the process to join and how/where we are supposed to communicate effectively. Thank you. --luckymustard 13:20, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Project needs updating

I think this Wikiproject could be really good, but it needs major updates and reorganization. I propose that this project adopts a similar navigation system to WikiProject Music genres. Also, all the talk page templates need to be updated to show that this project is not only for individual musicians, but also for musical groups. -- Heaven's Wrath   Talk  00:39, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems that this project does not really have any active participants. I think that I will update and reorganize this project gradually. Active participation would be great. -- Heaven's Wrath   Talk  01:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
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