User:Pfctdayelise/Music guide

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

Other relevant links:
 * User:David Gerard/music tips for writing about bands.
 * Australian wikipedians' notice board/Complete to-do/Musicians Feel like filling out some red links? Look no further!
 * WikiProject Music
 * WP:ALBUMS
 * WikiProject Songs

Summary of writing style guidelines

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

Bands

 * Tex Perkins
 * The Cruel Sea
 * Snout (band) + redirects - see Special:Whatlinkshere/Snout
 * Big Heavy Stuff
 * Cordrazine
 * Diana Ah Naid (or Diana Anaid?)
 * Even (band)
 * Underground Lovers - expand
 * check links on Falls Festival
 * You Am I and Tim Rogers still need a decent shakeoff, not terribly encyclopaedic, kind of confused, plus images etc.
 * plus album pages for all of the above

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

Venues
Start from Category:Music venues in Australia Should these article names have "the"? Probably. Check WP:MOS. Fair Go 4 Live Music?
 * The Esplanade Hotel or The Espy? ;)
 * Empress Hotel is a stub (is it actually Empress of India Hotel?)
 * Evelyn Hotel
 * Hi-Fi Bar & Ballroom
 * Northcote Social Club
 * Tote Hotel
 * Sandringham Hotel - isn't this in Sydney? hmm I seem to remember the Whitlams song "God drinks at the Sando"
 * The Cornish Arms
 * The Palace
 * The Forum
 * dammit, that little theatre place just near the Town Hall, with red chairs and everyone sits down and it's not very rock'n'roll... perfect for the likes of Bic Runga, though
 * Palais Theatre
 * Prince of Wales, St Kilda
 * Sidney Myer Music Bowl (blergh!)
 * Rod Laver Arena
 * The Rob Roy Hotel? (I saw Lazy Susan there)
 * Revolver Upstairs? nah
 * Rainbow Hotel?
 * Pony? ...nah
 * Bar Open?
 * Festival Hall? Sounds like somewhere I should be aware of
 * The Zoo, Brisbane

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

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

Also relevant: Category:Australian awards.

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

"Name of song" (YYYY)

-->

"Name of song" (YYYY)

Or you can use the Listen template:

-->

You can also add this type of thing to wrap around it: ... (insert |right inside at the end of the template)

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

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