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SCOREPEDIA: Guidelines, Suggestions, and Q&A


Uni

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Initial observation: neither filmmusic nor filmusic are actual words, and I don't think they are used by any practitioners of the craft or anyone in the industry. I'd suggest changing that.

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Initial observation: neither filmmusic nor filmusic are actual words, and I don't think they are used by any practitioners of the craft or anyone in the industry. I'd suggest changing that.

This is a personal conceit that actually does have some precedent. Critics who wrote film score reviews in mid-20th century periodicals often telescoped the term like that. I always liked it, and so I casually toss it in here and there.

Well . . . here, at least. There—meaning on Scorepedia—it's probably not such a good idea. (Though I have yet to see anyone use it over there.)

* * * * * * * * * * *

Okay, folks. As promised, about a dozen composer's pages have been imported from Wikipedia. As I mentioned in the post above, we're free to tweak these any way we please. So take a look, and have fun. ;)

- Uni

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Which page are you looking at as an example?

I'm pretty sure we can transfer just about any template in from WP. We just need to know what we're looking for. (Alternately, we've discussed just posting a link to a database site.)

- Uni

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Fantastic that this really happens. I will gladly contribute.

And man, did you ever. Absolutely phenomenal job on the Minority Report article! The anecdotal material is superlative. You nailed the formatting and layout on the head. You even took the time to transfer in the headings from the other pages. Very nice work indeed.

I do have one question, and it involves something I might want to put up there in the guidelines: you did reword the external articles you cited, right? I mean, you didn't just cut and paste them as-is? Copyright issues make that kind of thing sticky. (I'm assuming you recast it all. I just want to make it clear to everyone what we can and can't do in cases like this.)

Again, great work on this.

A big thank you to Uni and all people involved for posting these guidelines and for all the effort!

Quite frankly, if you want to thank me for the effort I've put in so far, this is unquestionably the best way to do it. . . !

And on that note: though he hasn't mentioned anything on these threads about it yet, Faleel also did a kick-ass job breaking down the themes in Super 8. (You guys are starting to make me look lazy by comparison!)

- Uni

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Here's their track listing template:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Track_listing

I was able to create a template on Scorepedia, but simply copying the code from Wikipedia didn't seem to work.

I'm currently working on that. But your basic intend was right: Just copy the template from Wikipedia and you're set. However, in this occasion a bit more work obviously needs to be done. :)

Here's their track listing template:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Track_listing

I was able to create a template on Scorepedia, but simply copying the code from Wikipedia didn't seem to work.

I've successfully integrated the template. You can see a use case here: http://en.scorepedia.org/wiki/Super_8#Soundtrack_Releases_and_Cue_Lists

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Fantastic that this really happens. I will gladly contribute.

And man, did you ever. Absolutely phenomenal job on the Minority Report article! The anecdotal material is superlative. You nailed the formatting and layout on the head. You even took the time to transfer in the headings from the other pages. Very nice work indeed.

I do have one question, and it involves something I might want to put up there in the guidelines: you did reword the external articles you cited, right? I mean, you didn't just cut and paste them as-is? Copyright issues make that kind of thing sticky. (I'm assuming you recast it all. I just want to make it clear to everyone what we can and can't do in cases like this.)

Again, great work on this.

>A big thank you to Uni and all people involved for posting these guidelines and for all the effort!

Quite frankly, if you want to thank me for the effort I've put in so far, this is unquestionably the best way to do it. . . !

And on that note: though he hasn't mentioned anything on these threads about it yet, Faleel also did a kick-ass job breaking down the themes in Super 8. (You guys are starting to make me look lazy by comparison!)

- Uni

Well, i didn't reword the interview and liner notes... but if i have to i will although that would be a pain in the ass. Is it really necessary? We are not writing a scientifical thesis and even then i could copy the text as is as long as the citation is right and it all appears in italic.

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Here's their track listing template:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Track_listing

I was able to create a template on Scorepedia, but simply copying the code from Wikipedia didn't seem to work.

I'm currently working on that. But your basic intend was right: Just copy the template from Wikipedia and you're set. However, in this occasion a bit more work obviously needs to be done. :)

>Here's their track listing template:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Track_listing

I was able to create a template on Scorepedia, but simply copying the code from Wikipedia didn't seem to work.

I've successfully integrated the template. You can see a use case here: http://en.scorepedia.org/wiki/Super_8#Soundtrack_Releases_and_Cue_Lists

Thank you, Marcus! I'm looking forward to giving this a try later.

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Well, i didn't reword the interview and liner notes... but if i have to i will although that would be a pain in the ass. Is it really necessary? We are not writing a scientifical thesis and even then i could copy the text as is as long as the citation is right and it all appears in italic.

Well, copyright laws for a thesis are just the same as for any other work. As far as interviews go, I assume we can use them based on fair use (and there's no point in re-wording an interview), as long as they're appropriately quoted.

I've been thinking about something else... and I understand that I've been taking the easy way so far, commenting on procedures without actually contributing any content myself (all I've done so far is sign up for an account). But does it really make sense to import entire articles from Wikipedia? Of course, it's nice, easy content, but there might be some issues with it down the road. If something gets corrected at Wikipedia, we'll still have the old version. If someone notices an error here and fix it, exactly the same correction would have to be done at Wikipedia. (I understand that similar problems will occur, to an extent, if we write our own articles, as much of their content will undoubtedly still come from Wikipedia). But also, many of the links in those articles probably won't quite fit into our structure. When composer X write score Y, Wikipedia will mostly talk about X providing the music for film Y (with the corresponding links), whereas on Scorepedia, it'll be about the music anyway, i.e. X writing Y.

Just something that occurred to me, and maybe you completely disagree. :)

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I think importing stuff from wikipedia makes perfect sense as long as we 1) Check for mistakes and correct them

2) Keep them up to date but not necessarily the same as wikipedia

3) Have the correct citations

Our version will be different (much more details, informative) than wikipedia but parts of it can stay the same if well written. Don't change good things for the sake of change, that makes no sense except it is necessary because of copyright issues.

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Well, i didn't reword the interview and liner notes... but if i have to i will although that would be a pain in the ass. Is it really necessary? We are not writing a scientifical thesis and even then i could copy the text as is as long as the citation is right and it all appears in italic.

Oh, yes, it's absolutely necessary. We can't just copy text outright from another source and use that for articles on SP. Wikipedia doesn't allow it, and while we may have a little more flexibility when it comes to certain wiki concepts, this isn't one of them. It's a bit of a pain, yes, but that's part and parcel of writing an article in any format: you have to do some writing.

Now, here's the thing: I don't want you to worry about it in this case. This'll make for a good example of how to take an original source (liner notes, periodical material, internet information) and recast it so you convey the same information in essentially your own words. You won't change the wording of the quotes themselves, of course. Only the "narrative" stuff has to change . . . although it can also make a nice effect to take the information from some of their quotes and change it into narrative style for variety and readability.

You can actually see an example of this in the Raiders article, under the heading "The composing process." I got everything from the Laurent Bouzereau interviews, but did a little creative reshaping, using the information from the Williams quotes to tell the story and the Spielberg quote for the final emphasis.

I'm going to do the same with your Minority Report article, just to show you how it works. So you don't have to burden yourself with this particular pain in the ass. ;) Like I said, it'll make for a good way to show the sort of thing we need to do in order to avoid any legal problems in the future.

I've been thinking about something else... and I understand that I've been taking the easy way so far, commenting on procedures without actually contributing any content myself (all I've done so far is sign up for an account). But does it really make sense to import entire articles from Wikipedia? Of course, it's nice, easy content, but there might be some issues with it down the road. If something gets corrected at Wikipedia, we'll still have the old version. If someone notices an error here and fix it, exactly the same correction would have to be done at Wikipedia. (I understand that similar problems will occur, to an extent, if we write our own articles, as much of their content will undoubtedly still come from Wikipedia). But also, many of the links in those articles probably won't quite fit into our structure. When composer X write score Y, Wikipedia will mostly talk about X providing the music for film Y (with the corresponding links), whereas on Scorepedia, it'll be about the music anyway, i.e. X writing Y.

Just something that occurred to me, and maybe you completely disagree. :)

I see what you're saying, but I don't see it as a problem. The thing is, we're not responsible for Wikipedia's content. We're going to be doing some resculpting on these articles to reflect the viewpoint of this website. Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, while Scorepedia deals specifically with a very narrow and focused subject. Think about it this way: if you wanted to find out about something—let's say an automotive engine—you might look it up in your Encyclopedia Britannica to get the general picture. But if you wanted to know the history of automobiles, or how to rebuild the motor for a Volkswagon Bug, or something along those lines, you'd get your hands on a book or manual devoted entirely to that subject.

Wikipedia is the Britannica in this case. It may have some useful info about these composers, but there's more to be had. Someone looking up one of these composers on Scorepedia is expecting to get more and different information than they would on the general site. The imported articles aren't meant to mirror what appears on WP. They're just foundations to be built on, to save us some time so we don't have to do them from scratch. I expect that if you come back in a few months or a year and compare them on both sites, you'll see they've become quite disparate (and for good reason).

Does that make sense? We should want all of this information to be presented in a manner that's distinct from WP . . . otherwise, we'd do just as well to simply edit and add what we've got to WP and leave it at that.

- Uni

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Oh, yes, it's absolutely necessary. We can't just copy text outright from another source and use that for articles on SP. Wikipedia doesn't allow it, and while we may have a little more flexibility when it comes to certain wiki concepts, this isn't one of them. It's a bit of a pain, yes, but that's part and parcel of writing an article in any format: you have to do some writing.

Just for clarification: Wikipedia generally does allow you to reuse their texts if you keep the license:

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

Scorepedia uses the same license, so copy/paste is fine in both directions, although in both cases the original authors must be credited.
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Well, i already changed the text. Interview quotes have to stay the same and therefore must not be changed . The same thing is true for personal quotes. Spielbergs quote has to be taken as is, everything else would not reflect his own wording. These two things are essential in my opinion for scorepedia to work.

I agree about all the other points, articles should be reworded.

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Though he hasn't mentioned anything on these threads about it yet, Faleel also did a kick-ass job breaking down the themes in Super 8. (You guys are starting to make me look lazy by comparison!)

- Uni

I can't take credit for that, I used Jason's Analysis for the themes, and just edited a few things here and there.

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I looked over your changes. They're much better, certainly.

But just to be clear: you can recast a quote as a story, using the quote as the source. For the Raiders article, I had two interviews to draw from, one for Williams and one for Spielberg. I used the Williams quote as grist for the "story" preceding Spielberg's quote. But I could just as easily have done it the other way around. I could've quoted Williams word-for-word as he spoke about the difficulty in finding just the right iconic, "inevitable" theme, and then written this to follow it:

Spielberg's only input, after hearing the two themes, was to ask Williams whether he could use both. Williams agreed, using one as the Main Theme and the other as the bridge.

There's nothing inaccurate or dissembling about this. You're not changing anything by extracting the relevant information from a quote to shape your anecdote. Newspapers, magazines, and all other press sources do that in every story they write. That's how they get the information they reveal in their articles. And it's a good way to break up a long quote in a way that provides balance and variety.

Just for clarification: Wikipedia generally does allow you to reuse their texts if you keep the license:

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

Scorepedia uses the same license, so copy/paste is fine in both directions, although in both cases the original authors must be credited.

Just for further clarification: I wasn't referring to copying pages from WP over to SP (which, as you say, we can do). I was talking about copying text, other than direct quotes, from outside sources directly into an article. That we can't do.

I can't take credit for that, I used Jason's Analysis for the themes, and just edited a few things here and there.

You can take credit for making the effort to do so . . . and you should! Just like you deserve the credit for the rollout of roughly 200 new pages (or so it seems!) in the last few hours. The site's growing exponentially already, and it's mostly because of one person. . . !

EDIT: Forget what I said about the extra templates and interlinks being a problem because of the importing process. Looks like they wind up on SP regardless of the way we get the articles there. So for now I'm spending most of my time deleting all that useless stuff to clean up the articles. We can use some templates (if we import them from WP), but most of them are for options I don't think we really care about at this point.

- Uni

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I looked over your changes. They're much better, certainly.

But just to be clear: you can recast a quote as a story, using the quote as the source. For the Raiders article, I had two interviews to draw from, one for Williams and one for Spielberg. I used the Williams quote as grist for the "story" preceding Spielberg's quote. But I could just as easily have done it the other way around. I could've quoted Williams word-for-word as he spoke about the difficulty in finding just the right iconic, "inevitable" theme, and then written this to follow it:

Spielberg's only input, after hearing the two themes, was to ask Williams whether he could use both. Williams agreed, using one as the Main Theme and the other as the bridge.

There's nothing inaccurate or dissembling about this. You're not changing anything by extracting the relevant information from a quote to shape your anecdote. Newspapers, magazines, and all other press sources do that in every story they write. That's how they get the information they reveal in their articles. And it's a good way to break up a long quote in a way that provides balance and variety.

I think it's a matter of taste then. I simply prefer to read and use the exact quotes as much as possible because they provide the most detail in itself. But i don't necessarily use all the quotes of an interview. But when i use quotes i want them to be as accurate as possible meaning i use exactly what they said or wrote. It more than often happens that crucial things get changed in newspaper recastings of interviews that destroy the context and meaning of a quote.

Of course i could also reword JW's or Steven Spielberg's quotes but often the way they say things cannot exactly be replicated by rewording it. It is also more credible to have the actual interview quotes in my opinion. And it's no problem as long as the citation of the source is correct.

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Anybody who wants to, can contribute information from their Analyses posted in the reviews section here.

I just ported my Themes analysis for The Ten Commandments over to Scorepedia myself.

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I've only just read through this thread and think it's a great idea. I have a couple of suggestions - let me know what you think.

First, I think it would be useful to have a "Style of the Score" section on each entry that discusses general points like

-harmonic style (tonal, atonal, modal, etc.)

- melodic style (intervals emphasized, whether there is a predominance of themes or not)

- instrumentation

- use of diegetic music (occurs in the fictional world of the film, heard by the characters) vs. non-diegetic music (not occurring in the fictional world of the film)

- use of original vs. pre-existing music

These sorts of things - you could have more or less depending on the score. None of these require too much detail, but I think something like this would give people a sense of what the score's about, musically speaking. And it would also be a good summary of the character of the score. It might be a good way to describe how one score differs from the next.

Second, I could add a sentence or two about the musical features of the score's themes that contribute to the theme's emotional character. Just simple things, nothing too theoretical. Things like use of dotted rhythms to suggest a military feel, or rising fifths to suggest a heroic character. That sort of thing. Not too much, but just enough to give an idea of how the composer makes the theme sound like it does.

I would be happy to add what I can - I have had extensive training in composition and music theory, and these kinds of things would not take long to add for a single score at a time.

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That would, of course, make an outstanding edition to the articles on Scorepedia. Feel perfectly free to add a new heading ("Musical analysis" or something similar) to any page already posted. Alternately, you could start a new article on any score for which you already have this information. Don't feel like you have to fill in the rest of the info under the other headings; just kick it off with a summary sentence and jump straight down to your analysis. As I've said above, someone else will come in behind you and flesh out the rest of the piece.

So knock yourself out! Any ground you break with this kind of thing will be an example to encourage others to do the same.

* * * * * * * * * * *

While we're on the subject of that first sentence of an article's opening summary: we've been experimenting on some of the pages already in place, and we're settling on a sentence type that seems to work pretty well. First off, this is supposed to be an encyclopedic presentation, so the first sentence should be a declarative statement, not a verbal narrative. In other words, it shouldn't open with something like this: "In 1991, Steven Spielberg created his own take on the Peter Pan legend, and once again invited collaborator John Williams to do the score. Thus, Hook was created." That's known as "burying the lede." The score—which is the main subject of the article—should be mentioned first, not last.

Also, this being a site specifically about film music, we don't need to state the obvious and make some kind of delineation between the movie and the score (with an awkward phrase like "for the movie of the same name"). Scores always share their titles with their respective films, so there's no reason to be needlessly redundant.

So the opener should first mention the film, then the composer, then give information about the movie (year, subject, etc.) and its director. This is a good lead to follow: "Minority Report is a John Williams score for the 2002 neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg." Basic, straightforward, informative. Go and do thou likewise.

- Uni

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Just a note: The server is currently unavailable due to unknown reasons. The tech-team of the hosting company is aware of the problem and is dealing with the situation. Once the server is back up, I'll inform you.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

And we are back.

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I have a suggestion for all articles in the Score category: The name of the article shouldn't contain the phrase Score and/or Soundtrack. Unlike the Wikipedia there won't be an article for the film itself as it would make no sense. It looks just strange to have it here or there.

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I have a suggestion for all articles in the Score category: The name of the article shouldn't contain the phrase Score and/or Soundtrack. Unlike the Wikipedia there won't be an article for the film itself as it would make no sense. It looks just strange to have it here or there.

Yup. It is, after all, a wiki about film music, not the movies themselves, so there's no reason to have "Score" in the title. (I've been trying for a while to figure out how to get rid of the one hanging on the end of the Raiders of the Lost Ark page title. Still not sure how to get that done.)

Agreed.

I also noticed Wikipedia has fairly extensive articles on the Star Wars scores. I wonder if we might want to import those as a starting point?

This seems like an excellent idea. No reason not to do it—for these, and for any other particular scores that have a significant page on Wikipedia.

- Uni

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  • 2 months later...

Sad to see that all enthusiasm for the pedia seems to have vanished as fast as it appeared...

Well at least i can say that i have contributed one article. Still, as no one seems to organize and motivate people to actively add stuff i decided to wait till it picks up steam again for my next contribution.

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Part of the difficulty of this project is the unavoidable perception (whether it is true or not) that Scorepedia duplicates what is already present on Wikipedia. Perhaps the site's purpose is at present consumed by the soundtrack pages on Wikipedia. Scorepedia's name, look, and editable-by-anyone format may be too similar as is. And we've even talked about importing material from Wikipedia. What we have to ask ourselves is, what does Scorepedia offer that Wikipedia does not? If we can come up with something clearly different, we should focus on that and hopefully interest will again resurface. If not, perhaps we should focus on improving the existing pages on Wikipedia.

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Just thought I would warn Marcus etc. that we are getting spam accounts, with "porn" links.

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Part of the difficulty of this project is the unavoidable perception (whether it is true or not) that Scorepedia duplicates what is already present on Wikipedia. Perhaps the site's purpose is at present consumed by the soundtrack pages on Wikipedia. Scorepedia's name, look, and editable-by-anyone format may be too similar as is. And we've even talked about importing material from Wikipedia. What we have to ask ourselves is, what does Scorepedia offer that Wikipedia does not? If we can come up with something clearly different, we should focus on that and hopefully interest will again resurface. If not, perhaps we should focus on improving the existing pages on Wikipedia.

A project like Scorepedia can be much more specific as Wikipedia when it comes to such specialized topics like filmmusic. Obviously this is true for every specialized wiki.

If I see what trouble the La-La Land Records entry on Wikipedia got I see the value in such a project like Scorepedia.

The greatest problem we have is the will and time to participate. In the last months I was unable to devote any time to the project. But this is the vital point. Having enough time and will to support this idea. So the question is: Shall we proceed with the project? Or should Scorepedia ultimately die to have an answer to the question if such a project useful?

Just thought I would warn Marcus etc. that we are getting spam accounts, with "porn" links.

I've taken care of these users.

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I really want this to work, I think it could be awesome. That said, it's not something I have the time to do, unfortunately! Which is frustrating.

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More spam users.

I have purged those accounts and also added email confirmation for each account. If you want to contribute you need to confirm your email. If this doesn't work I'll restrict registration for the time being.

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I agree with Marcus - the big problem for all of us who are excited about Scorepedia is finding time to work on it. Still, I feel strongly that it's exactly what we need here at JWFan and over time, as people get excited about various scores and releases and do new work analyzing them, the usefulness of Scorepedia will become apparent and new content will gradually appear.

I think it's important not to rush the gestation of a project like this. If it takes time to build steam, that's actually better than populating it with tons of content before we have taken the time to thoughtfully establish some early articles and organization as a solid foundation for others to build on. I say we continue to contribute here and there as we are able, and the project will build organically at a measured pace. Once it becomes a good enough resource, at least for certain scores and composers, it will attract more attention from other score enthusiasts.

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Big free-lance projects don't start up overnight. Giving up on them ensures that they never will get there.

You need a looong breath to see this to conclusion. If people think it is worthwhile, keep it up! (Y)

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  • 3 months later...

Hi, is this interesting project still active? I don't see a link in Scorepedia to register.

Yes, the project is still active and if you don't mind sending me a private message, I'll be happy to create an account for you.

Hehe, it died.

Nope, it didn't. I can assure you that the project is dead when the wiki got deleted.

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This project is much needed, but will take time to find its footing. There's no use giving up on it just because the small number of initial contributors haven't had time to expand it much so far. Every little bit helps, and it will only gradually become established as a resource, but once that begins to happen I would expect it to get more exposure and thus a lot more people will begin to add to it.

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Okay . . . time to break the silence on this. Like everyone else, the last six months have made it brutally difficult for me to commit extra time to this project. As the creator and "sponsor" of this thread, I carry an extra helping of the guilties over it--but what's done is done.

I'm going to make a real effort to get back to this, and in a better fashion than I did before. Part of the problem was that I burned myself out a bit in attempting to clean up every article that people imported from Wikipedia (by extracting the useless templates and links that were broken in the transfer process). That was ultimately some pretty tedious and unrewarding work. It got me away from what I really enjoy doing, which is writing the articles themselves . . . and when things got busy for me, the thought of spending my free time doing more of that kind of detailed nitpicking just didn't appeal to me enough to come back to it.

But I've thought about it occasionally, and regretted that we didn't get things off to a better start. And there's still nothing preventing that.

A couple of (belated) responses to comments left before:

Part of the difficulty of this project is the unavoidable perception (whether it is true or not) that Scorepedia duplicates what is already present on Wikipedia. Perhaps the site's purpose is at present consumed by the soundtrack pages on Wikipedia. Scorepedia's name, look, and editable-by-anyone format may be too similar as is. And we've even talked about importing material from Wikipedia. What we have to ask ourselves is, what does Scorepedia offer that Wikipedia does not? If we can come up with something clearly different, we should focus on that and hopefully interest will again resurface. If not, perhaps we should focus on improving the existing pages on Wikipedia.

A project like Scorepedia can be much more specific as Wikipedia when it comes to such specialized topics like filmmusic. Obviously this is true for every specialized wiki.

If I see what trouble the La-La Land Records entry on Wikipedia got I see the value in such a project like Scorepedia.

The greatest problem we have is the will and time to participate. In the last months I was unable to devote any time to the project. But this is the vital point. Having enough time and will to support this idea. So the question is: Shall we proceed with the project? Or should Scorepedia ultimately die to have an answer to the question if such a project useful?

This was an excellent and necessary point. Ludwig, you were the one who wanted to add a "Style of the Score" section to the articles, a detail that would be too esoteric for Wikipedia's tastes. If you go on too long or indulge in fine-print excesses about a subject they feel only deserves a few paragraphs, the editor types get restless and start slashing prose. Scorepedia is exactly the place where that sort of information can flourish--which is precisely why there should be such a place existing independently of WP.

I think people are interested in seeing this work, and I'm thinking it won't necessarily require the amount of time and will you're talking about, Marcus. Here's the thing: the vast majority of members on this board will think nothing of spending five minutes writing about how Rambo or Total Recall were composed on the Jerry Goldsmith thread, or the importance of Cocoon amongst the early elements of James Horner's repertoire, or whatever. If each of those people were to spend that same five minutes writing the same information over on Scorepedia instead of here, in a few weeks' time things would really start to take off. What we're really asking people to do is take the stuff they're BSing about here and put it to good use there, just a little at a time.

Will they do it? That remains to be seen. Chances are better, though, if a few of us take the lead and set the example.

I agree with Marcus - the big problem for all of us who are excited about Scorepedia is finding time to work on it. Still, I feel strongly that it's exactly what we need here at JWFan and over time, as people get excited about various scores and releases and do new work analyzing them, the usefulness of Scorepedia will become apparent and new content will gradually appear.

I think it's important not to rush the gestation of a project like this. If it takes time to build steam, that's actually better than populating it with tons of content before we have taken the time to thoughtfully establish some early articles and organization as a solid foundation for others to build on. I say we continue to contribute here and there as we are able, and the project will build organically at a measured pace. Once it becomes a good enough resource, at least for certain scores and composers, it will attract more attention from other score enthusiasts.

This was a fantastic way to put it. We don't need to see the place explode overnight to consider it a success. It'll be much more successful in the long run if we take the time and caution to build a strong, solid foundation that'll give folks the right idea about how to approach this thing. The alternative is to rush something into place that's a mile wide and an inch deep, that outsiders will see more as just another fan site than a serious attempt to chronicle an important artistic form in its own right.

So I'm back in again. I'm going to commit to spending a few minutes every day adding something to the site--whether it's a new page or a short paragraph or a bit of editing--or even cleaning up an imported article once in a while, which still needs to be done (though not for hours on end). If a few others will join me in this, we'll see some growth before too long. I remain eminently optimistic.

- Uni

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Okay . . . time to break the silence on this. Like everyone else, the last six months have made it brutally difficult for me to commit extra time to this project. As the creator and "sponsor" of this thread, I carry an extra helping of the guilties over it--but what's done is done.

I'm going to make a real effort to get back to this, and in a better fashion than I did before. Part of the problem was that I burned myself out a bit in attempting to clean up every article that people imported from Wikipedia (by extracting the useless templates and links that were broken in the transfer process). That was ultimately some pretty tedious and unrewarding work. It got me away from what I really enjoy doing, which is writing the articles themselves . . . and when things got busy for me, the thought of spending my free time doing more of that kind of detailed nitpicking just didn't appeal to me enough to come back to it.

But I've thought about it occasionally, and regretted that we didn't get things off to a better start. And there's still nothing preventing that.

A couple of (belated) responses to comments left before:

Part of the difficulty of this project is the unavoidable perception (whether it is true or not) that Scorepedia duplicates what is already present on Wikipedia. Perhaps the site's purpose is at present consumed by the soundtrack pages on Wikipedia. Scorepedia's name, look, and editable-by-anyone format may be too similar as is. And we've even talked about importing material from Wikipedia. What we have to ask ourselves is, what does Scorepedia offer that Wikipedia does not? If we can come up with something clearly different, we should focus on that and hopefully interest will again resurface. If not, perhaps we should focus on improving the existing pages on Wikipedia.

A project like Scorepedia can be much more specific as Wikipedia when it comes to such specialized topics like filmmusic. Obviously this is true for every specialized wiki.

If I see what trouble the La-La Land Records entry on Wikipedia got I see the value in such a project like Scorepedia.

The greatest problem we have is the will and time to participate. In the last months I was unable to devote any time to the project. But this is the vital point. Having enough time and will to support this idea. So the question is: Shall we proceed with the project? Or should Scorepedia ultimately die to have an answer to the question if such a project useful?

This was an excellent and necessary point. Ludwig, you were the one who wanted to add a "Style of the Score" section to the articles, a detail that would be too esoteric for Wikipedia's tastes. If you go on too long or indulge in fine-print excesses about a subject they feel only deserves a few paragraphs, the editor types get restless and start slashing prose. Scorepedia is exactly the place where that sort of information can flourish--which is precisely why there should be such a place existing independently of WP.

I see what you mean, Uni. And yes, I agree that in-depth information would be great on Scorepedia and certainly set it apart from Wikipedia's soundtrack pages.

Writings about film music have really only flourished relatively recently, and there's still tons and tons out there that has nothing or next-to-nothing on it (I mean, come on - Star Wars, really?). So I would say that the wonderful kinds of details so many of us love on film music would have a happy home on Scorepedia. Count me in.

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Exactly. I actually spent yesterday creating my case-in-point: Poltergeist.

It's not quite finished yet, but I've been working it up as a sort of "ultimate example" of what a complete score page can potentially be. For obvious reasons, I used a score for which a wealth of information is available (not all pages will be able to reach this level of detail). I'd really like to see us get some better formatting—tables for the soundtrack releases, cue lists, and that sort of thing, and I'd really like to see the template for the Infoboxes at the top of the page get up and running.

But with the tools we have available so far, this is the kind of thing I think we're aiming for . . . and it's another answer to your original question, Ludwig. Let's say you're a new collector interested in learning more about Goldsmith's score for Poltergeist. If you look the title up on WP, you can find one brief page summarizing all three films at once, and absolutely zero on the score itself. WP is frankly a dry well for this kind of specific information. And I don't know why we should slave ourselves creating pages for them over there when we can expend the same effort building something for a ground up that caters directly to film score lovers like us—and something we can put our own names on and take pride in helping create.

You'll notice that I left a space open on the Poltergeist page for your proposed take, Ludwig ("Style of the score"). I'm wondering whether you'd be willing to fill in that blank with the sort of thing you have in mind, so we have a better idea of what you're suggesting. With that in place, and perhaps a couple of other bells and whistles (such as a complete cue analysis), we might eventually be able to direct new contributors here as an example of how to build a new page for a score.

- Uni

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Exactly. I actually spent yesterday creating my case-in-point: Poltergeist.

It's not quite finished yet, but I've been working it up as a sort of "ultimate example" of what a complete score page can potentially be. For obvious reasons, I used a score for which a wealth of information is available (not all pages will be able to reach this level of detail). I'd really like to see us get some better formatting—tables for the soundtrack releases, cue lists, and that sort of thing, and I'd really like to see the template for the Infoboxes at the top of the page get up and running.

But with the tools we have available so far, this is the kind of thing I think we're aiming for . . . and it's another answer to your original question, Ludwig. Let's say you're a new collector interested in learning more about Goldsmith's score for Poltergeist. If you look the title up on WP, you can find one brief page summarizing all three films at once, and absolutely zero on the score itself. WP is frankly a dry well for this kind of specific information. And I don't know why we should slave ourselves creating pages for them over there when we can expend the same effort building something for a ground up that caters directly to film score lovers like us—and something we can put our own names on and take pride in helping create.

You'll notice that I left a space open on the Poltergeist page for your proposed take, Ludwig ("Style of the score"). I'm wondering whether you'd be willing to fill in that blank with the sort of thing you have in mind, so we have a better idea of what you're suggesting. With that in place, and perhaps a couple of other bells and whistles (such as a complete cue analysis), we might eventually be able to direct new contributors here as an example of how to build a new page for a score.

- Uni

Congratulations on some very fine work on Poltergeist, Uni. It's a good example of what's possible on the site. Well done.

For style of the score, I don't know this one well enough to fill it in myself, but what I'm suggesting is a brief paragraph or two that gives us a sense of why the score sounds like it does. The section would discuss some details of the score in terms of:

- Harmony - things like whether it's tonal, atonal, or somewhere in between, and if one dominates the score; also perhaps the genre the harmony evokes - for tonal, there's classical, jazz, popular, folk, and perhaps even more specific breakdowns of these (Mozart-like classical, Coltrane-like jazz, etc.); and for atonal, whether it's freely atonal, twelve-tone, aleatoric (chance music), experimental, etc.

- Melody - whether there are full-phrased themes (a la Williams) or short motifs (a la Herrmann), whether the melody is largely on-beat (more of a classical Hollywood trait) or more off-beat (in a more jazz or popular vein), whether there is a melody at all (often not in modernist scores), and perhaps something of the genre of the melody (this is usually tied to genre of the harmony as described above)

- Rhythm - whether it's generally rhythmically active or more relaxed, whether it has a regular or irregular meter or lacks a sense of pulse altogether, whether there are syncopations (off-beat accents) or not (again, this strongly ties into the genre)

- Instrumentation - speaks for itself, but would be good to describe a few unique aspects of the score in this respect

- Timbres - tone colour, meaning the quality of the sound - especially useful for odd uses of instruments or electronically-created ones

- Textures - whether it's usually the full orchestra blasting away, or small groups from the orchestra, or combinations thereof, or something in between

In analyzing style, different scores will call for emphasis on different combinations of these aspects. If I was analyzing a Williams score, for instance, I would focus on harmony, melody, and instrumentation, whereas if I were analyzing a Zimmer score, I would focus more on rhythm, timbre, and texture.

This may seem overwhelming, but not a whole lot has to be said to cover the main points of a score in these respects. Harmony's probably the hardest because it requires some musical training or at least an ability to discern different musical styles like jazz, pop, classical, etc. from the harmony of the music.

Hope this helps.

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Exactly. I actually spent yesterday creating my case-in-point: Poltergeist.

It's not quite finished yet, but I've been working it up as a sort of "ultimate example" of what a complete score page can potentially be. For obvious reasons, I used a score for which a wealth of information is available (not all pages will be able to reach this level of detail). I'd really like to see us get some better formatting—tables for the soundtrack releases, cue lists, and that sort of thing, and I'd really like to see the template for the Infoboxes at the top of the page get up and running.

But with the tools we have available so far, this is the kind of thing I think we're aiming for . . . and it's another answer to your original question, Ludwig. Let's say you're a new collector interested in learning more about Goldsmith's score for Poltergeist. If you look the title up on WP, you can find one brief page summarizing all three films at once, and absolutely zero on the score itself. WP is frankly a dry well for this kind of specific information. And I don't know why we should slave ourselves creating pages for them over there when we can expend the same effort building something for a ground up that caters directly to film score lovers like us—and something we can put our own names on and take pride in helping create.

You'll notice that I left a space open on the Poltergeist page for your proposed take, Ludwig ("Style of the score"). I'm wondering whether you'd be willing to fill in that blank with the sort of thing you have in mind, so we have a better idea of what you're suggesting. With that in place, and perhaps a couple of other bells and whistles (such as a complete cue analysis), we might eventually be able to direct new contributors here as an example of how to build a new page for a score.

- Uni

That is one brilliant example! Very well done, Uni, very impressive! :worship:

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Exactly. I actually spent yesterday creating my case-in-point: Poltergeist.

One word: Wow!

Thank you very much for this in-depth article.

I will update the startpage of the wiki to add information about contribution and maybe even add a small showcase for outstanding articles like Poltergeist.

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