Wikipedia:Peer review/Tone cluster/archive2

Tone cluster
This peer review discussion has been closed. Considering bringing this to FAC. Would first appreciate an independent party's assessment of article's current state. Thanks much.—DCGeist (talk) 20:25, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Previous peer review

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for a very interesting article. I like the music of Charles Ives and enjoyed learning more about it. Here are some suggestions for improvement with an eye to FAC. Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 12:17, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. Most of the FAs on music are about songs or albums, but Choral symphony and Backmasking may be useful models.
 * One dab link here
 * One dead link too
 * In the lead I would avoid vague time terms like "today" . Today, tone clusters play a significant role in the work of free jazz musicians ...'' - one of the musicians listed is 82 and may not be active in the field much longer. Use more specific time terms where possible (in the 21st century? in the 2010s?)
 * More sound files might help - I know this is done for the 13th chord collapsed, but if other examples could be given that might help reader comprehension.
 * I missed the inline examples at first, but still think File:Cowell tone clusters.png would benefit from two sound files to show what each sounds like.
 * I thought this was refering to keyboards at first ''Boards of various dimension are sometimes employed, as in the Concord Sonata...
 * Not clear what year is meant for writing (and there are two battles of Manassas) ''The next known composition to feature several clusters—though not, in this case, specifically notated—is the solo piano piece Battle of Manassas, written that year by "Blind Tom" Bethune and published in 1866.
 * "piano writing" sounds clunky to my ear in Isaac Albéniz's use of them in Iberia (1905–8) may have influenced Gabriel Fauré's subsequent piano writing. I thought it meant musical compositions, but the next sentence refers to books, so I am confused.
 * The antecedent of "its" is unclear in ''[23] Joseph Horowitz has suggested that the "dissonant star clusters" in its third and fourth books were particularly compelling to Olivier Messiaen...
 * Another vague time term "for some time" in Though much of his work was made public only years later, Charles Ives had been exploring the possibilities of the tone cluster—which he referred to as the "group chord"—for some time. perhaps start the sentence with composition (In YEAR, Charles Ives began exploring..., though much of his work was made public only years later.)
 * Not sure the abbreviations are needed (or clear to all) here ''ca. 1904–15, publ. 1920, prem. 1928, rev. 1947
 * MOS says to give metric as well as English units (15 inches), the convert template works well for this
 * MOS says to have images that draw the reader's eye facing so that the lead the eye into the page and not out of it. Some images should thus be left justified
 * Since Ligeti is linked, is the [] needed in ''Robert Reigle identifies Croatian composer Josip Slavenski's organ-and-violin Sonata Religiosa (1925), with its sustained chromatic clusters, as "a missing link between Ives and [György] Ligeti."[56]
 * Is D add9 a typo? If not, needs more explanation ''In later rock practice, the D add9 chord characteristic of jangle pop involves a three-note set separated by major seconds (D, E, F♯), the sort of guitar cluster that may be characterized as a harp effect.[101]
 * I have to say that usually articles on a fairly specific topic not well know to the general public tend to become more specialized and technical (and harder to follow) the further down you read - this was the opposite. The lead is pretty technical and then as you read down there are more comprehensible explanations given (black and white keys). Since the lead is supposed to be a comprehensible overview of the whole article, I would try to put some of that in the lead. It may also be that I am more familair with the more modern music, which helped me.
 * I read closely to about the Cowell section and noted problem sentences. I did not read as closely after Cowell, sorry - hopefully Zeality will catch some of what I missed.
 * Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)


 * Thanks very much for your time, attention, and clarity. This is very helpful. It will probably be a week before I can devote myself to implementing the responsive edits, which I look forward to doing. Every point here strikes me as worthwhile. Best, Dan.—DCGeist (talk) 03:36, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

That was a pleasure to read. I printed out a hardcopy and worked backwards to the beginning of the article, but there wasn't really too much to correct... Let me know if it hits FAC, and good luck! ZeaLitY [ Talk  -  Activity  ]  03:55, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
 * As a style choice, you might look into finding sentences that start with prepositions (In [year]; After [event], etc.) and just making sure there aren't any cases of that three sentences in a row, and so on, just to mix it up a little. (There may not be any, of course.)
 * As a lover of putting samples of music into my articles, I strongly recommend finding some work (or recording yourself) playing a tone cluster section, and put a 30-second example of it somewhere. Since we're dealing with such old musical works here, you'll almost certainly be able to take a copyright-free sample of one of the many songs you speak of in the article, which would be a pleasureful tie-in for the reader. I was compelled to find some examples on Youtube after reading this.

Activity ]  19:43, 21 September 2011 (UTC)