Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Disco orchestration


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. j⚛e deckertalk 02:11, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Disco orchestration

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a WP:OR effort to conflate orchestration with record production there are zero reliable sources on this "topic." At the very least this should be merged with disco, even then, sources will be required. Semitransgenic talk. 07:43, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:05, 31 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment. This could really be improved by the introduction of better references. From my point of view this seems to be a useful article. The comment above that the article is an attempt to conflate orchestration with record production is, I think, very wide off the mark. Certainly there are interactions between the two areas, but orchestration as a specific technique within disco and related dance musics strikes me as clearly notable. There are claims in the article that need careful discussion, particularly in relation to the Philly sound, but the whole problem of where the Philly sound fits into musical history has been argued about for four decades, and we're still nowhere near a definitive answer! I rather hope this stays, but as an article it needs some work. RomanSpa (talk) 04:13, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * but the entire article is original research, there are no references, that's the problem. I can find no reliable source that offers significant coverage of the topic entitled "disco orchestration". Without sources this article should not exist. Semitransgenic  talk. 15:41, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * There should be something in Jeremy Beadle's work, of course (no, not that Jeremy Beadle, the other (important) one, who unaccountably doesn't have his own entry here!). The references to Ian Levine should be easy to find from Record Mirror archives and the relevant gay press. And of course there's the famous article in The Face where Levine sets out his musical philosophy - I've got a copy of that somewhere in storage, though can't find it right now. Incidentally, I'm almost certain that dating Evelyn Thomas' "My Head's in the Stars" to 1979 is wrong - I think it's closer to the middle of the decade than the end. Likewise, the Frank Farian stuff is just a matter of going through the German equivalents. And so on. My point is that pretty much everything that the article says is true, or easy to correct. If you need specific references to the concept of "disco orchestration" these should also be findable. I suspect the real problem is that the references are likely to be in printed rather than electronic form. I'm reluctant to express an opinion one way or another in this debate, because I can see your point, but I would regret losing this page. Has the page creator been informed of this debate? RomanSpa (talk) 15:52, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * the creator has been notified.The biggest problem here is verifiability, even if the content is largely correct, without sources, it's useless as encyclopaedic content. The simplest solution is to redirect, take the prose over to disco and gut the rest. Semitransgenic  talk. 18:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem with that would be that we'd be adding a whole lot of unreferenced text to disco. If this discussion ends up as a "delete", perhaps the easiest thing would be to give the creator a copy of the whole page as a user subpage, and he can add references at leisure. If the creator doesn't indicate an interest in working further on this page and we end up at a "delete", I don't mind doing this myself, though it certainly won't be high up my priority list. RomanSpa (talk) 05:46, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * disco is already pretty poorly referenced, the content from here might survive there with a tag in place, but as an OR article unto itself I'm less comfortable. I agree that holding as a sub-page is an idea worth pursuing. Semitransgenic  talk. 09:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed, though this isn't just a problem for Wikipedia. The problem is that right from the beginning disco (and dance music generally) has been looked down on by some other musical genres; then there was the anti-disco backlash; and then there was AIDS. The first prevented disco from being written about seriously at the time, the second prevented it from being taken seriously in the years immediately after its zenith, and the last decimated the experts who knew most about it (e.g. the Jeremy Beadle mentioned earlier, and many of its composers and producers - Jacques Morali, Arthur Russell, etc.). The overall effect is that there are few references beyond magazines and specialist newspaper reviews. It's interesting how much our article on disco itself relies on books about dance music generally and magazine articles. There's scope for a good critical book on the subject. RomanSpa (talk) 10:19, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * not just an issue with disco, popular music studies is a relatively new field (compared to musicology), so quality sources are few and far between for niche content such as that offered in this article, however, we can only draw upon published reliable sources, and if they don't exist, they don't exist, there are of course plenty of usable sources for disco so there is no excuse for the shortage of citations there, but as for "orchestration" techniques in disco production, we need someone who cares enough about this topic to dig for the references. Semitransgenic  talk. 11:05, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that's a very fair point, though one thing that's very clear from here (England) is that the popular music press throughout the 70s was utterly dismissive of "pop" and "dance" music, and related genres. It's a problem that to some extent persists to this day. :-( RomanSpa (talk) 11:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Of course, serious dance culture has always been introverted anyway, and more interested in dancing than writing about it. And we've always been a small circle of friends. But at least we learned to dance. RomanSpa (talk) 11:52, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 09:09, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 01:42, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Speedy delete per nom, WP:OR, and not a single WP:RS, and WP:HOAX. Total BS. Certainly original BS, but still, BS. Any article on disco that doesn't mention these fellows must be. SW3 5DL (talk) 04:45, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. I don't feel this article is a hoax, nor do I feel that it's generally "BS" or otherwise false. Broadly speaking, I think it contains quite a lot of useful and true stuff. The problem is simply that there aren't adequate references, and that without those references the article looks too much like original research. If this article is deleted, please feel free to move the contents to my "personal space" here on Wikipedia, and I'll see what I can do with it. Thanks. RomanSpa (talk) 07:07, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Note to Closing Admin: This is definitely a WP:HOAX. A close reading will confirm how preposterous the claims being made are. The author claims there is such a thing as 'disco orchestration' created by various symphony orchestras around America. There is absolutely no RS anywhere to confirm such claims, but more importantly, there are no musical recordings by any of these orchestras that feature such tunes. There are no reviews of performances by these orchestras in the various arts and entertainment sections of the major newspapers as one would expect if their city's orchestra were involved in such an endeavor. Disco takes its name from the glass ball that hung over the dance floor and any orchestration came from the song writers like the Bee Gees and Donna Summer using the same 8 musical notes everybody else uses from R&B to heavy metal. SW3 5DL (talk) 17:09, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.