Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musical Instruments

Bulbul tarang vs. Taishōgoto

Is there any difference between a Bulbul tarang and a Taishōgoto, or are these just two regional names for the same instrument? If so, the articles should be merged. Kaldari (talk) 22:57, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Morphologically similar, but generally unrelated traditions. I would support keeping them separate as though they share a common origin, they've pretty much totally separate fields. There's also the Pakistani/Sindhi/Baluch instrument Benju, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to merge that one either. I'd almost like to have a category WP:Typewriter zithers, but that might be OR since I can't find an RS using it (though it pops up in online forums). MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:22, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Thinking on it further, I'd definitely keep bulbul and taisho separate, though not convinced the benju isn't basically a bulbul, and culturally/socially close enough. Thanks for the reminder, as I ended up going and adding refs to bulbul to remove the {{unref}}. The photo is a bit rough though, so it'd be good to track down another. There's a dude who runs a website about typewriter zithers in general, so might ping him for pics. MatthewVanitas (talk) 16:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Drum kit components template image

I'd like to change the image but would like some discussion, particularly as the one I'm wanting to replace is a featured image. See Template talk:Drum kit components#Image. TIA Andrewa (talk) 05:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmm... it seems that the image is a featured image at Wikimedia Commons but not at English Wikipedia, where the criteris are rightly different. If I get no discussion I'll be bold and change it. Andrewa (talk) 11:33, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Electric/electronic organs

I am wondering if there would any interest in creating a WikiProject for electronic organs? Such a project would cover the history and development of the electronic organ, beginning with the Telharmonium.. I believe this would be a good project similar in scope to the pipe organ project. There are, and have been, many manufacturers of electronic organs throughout the 20th Century, which I firmly believe calls for its own project.

Some of the more significant electronic organ builders, then and now, include: Hammond; Conn; Lowrey; Allen; Rogers; Lowrey; Johannus; and Thomas. Many of these articles are either stubs or poorly written, while a few have yet to be created.

I'd like to know everyone's thoughts. I believe the subject is significant enough to warrant its own project. You may reply to me either here or on my personal talk page. Thanks. Erzahler (talk) 02:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I would be hesitant to create a whole new WikiProject for organs specifically, given that the overarching WP Musical Instruments is awfully quiet. I'm not familiar enough with the overall WikiProject culture to know whether, for example, a thriving WikiProject Quebec should be maintained even if WikiProject Canada is moribund. As a middle-ground, have you considered making a sub-category of WPMUSINST? I don't even know the exact names for these sub-projects, but you'd still have the {{WPMUSINST}} on the Talk page to categorise it into the project, but you'd augment it to {{WPMUSINST|organ=yes}} so that it'd be sub-categorised as well. I had thought of doing similar for bagpipes, since we have well over a hundred articles on bagpiping. MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:44, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Instrumentalist categories at instrument articles

I removed a category "Clarinetists" from the Clarinet article because it appeared incorrect. The instrument cannot be an instrument player. Is there more need to remove such categories from instrument articles? Bass clarinet is in the "Bass clarinetists" category at the moment, and Trumpet is in the "Trumpeters" category, but I expect to remove those and any others I find. Note that Piano is not in the "Pianists" category, and Flute is not in the "Flautists" category. I think all the player categories should be removed from the instrument articles.

There should be consistency no matter which way is chosen. Binksternet (talk) 20:15, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I understand your objection to the logic of it, but I lean towards including the category of players in the article on the instrument. Bass clarinet, for example, does not include an explicit bulleted list of bass clarinetists, so it is useful to have, at the bottom of the page, a one-click link to such a list.

Consistency in Wikipedia will always be an elusive goal. I would rather see things like "ease of use" and "least astonishment" given precedence over "consistency for its own sake." That calls for case-by-case evaluation. Open to discussion, __ Just plain Bill (talk) 20:37, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Can someone familiar with the Hornbostel–Sachs system help clean up and/or standardize this a bit? If I have the time, I'm going to read up on it and see if at least the commonly encountered woodwind instruments are categorized systematically and correctly. I'm fine with the usage above, where, for example, the Clarinet article is in the category of Clarinetists. But a lot of the straightforward categorization seems to be a muddle still. - Special-T (talk) 23:22, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Improvements at Electronic bagpipes

Degerpipes electronic bagpipe chanter

This article had been been pretty iffy since its creation in 2006, with a tendency to either fanboyism for a particular make, or possibly even inappropriate advertising slant. Various editors would drop in and remove or add mentions of Brand X or Brand Y, or jam in overly enthusiastic content about what an amazing evolution Brand Z was.

I was getting tired of this, so today went and pinned down a 1962 attestation, well predating other "first" claims in the article, added a few refs, removed some unsupported content, and replaced a redpipes advert photo with a historical photo of an earlier form of e-pipes. I still would like to replace the initial photo (a rather murky, probably 2006 photo of Degerpipes) with a better-quality photo perhaps showing several brands of e-pipes for contrast. Article still isn't great, and I'd love to get more refs on the earliest forms of e-pipes since there are many tantalising clues on gBooks snippets. But I think it's an improvement, and I'll solicit some help on the Dunsire Bagpipe Forum as well. MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:50, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Mislabeled photo of a mandole?

El Anka playing the ?????

In the photo at El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka , I'm 90+% sure that the instrument is not a mandolin (as in the caption) or an oud (as in the photo description). It's way bigger than a mandolin, and unlike an oud has a flat back, mechanical tuners, and frets. I submit instead it's a mandole (an article I just started and added the pic to). Anyone object to changing the caption/description to reflect this? MatthewVanitas (talk) 23:08, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Semi contrabassoon

Anyone with knowledge/expertise in this area? It's not clear from this article whether these instruments exist, or ever existed. I could help with the copy-edit and POV/OR issues of the article, but I'm not sure the article should exist in the first place. - Special-T (talk) 17:11, 11 March 2012 (UTC)