Janine’s blog

The question: Are there any standards for referencing classical music, in the same way that there are standard referencing systems for print materials (Harvard, APA etc)?

Background: As part of my iTunes activity, I have uploaded all of my classical music collection. Early in the exercise, I noticed that there was a great lack of consistency in how the track information was formatted. I decided that as far as the composer field was concerned, I would like pristine consistency, so I settled on

<last name>comma<first names>space open bracket<year of birth>hyphen<year of death>close bracket

For example:

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827)    

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756 - 1791)

This convention then ensures that if I sort by composer, all of the Beethoven tracks will be together and I can easily gather them up (or a subset of them) in a playlist if I wish. I cannot automatically count them in iTunes but that is another story for another posting.

When it comes to the title field, the situation is far more complex:

For example, the well know piano piece “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven could be titled in any of the following ways

• Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor “Quasi una fantasia”, Op. 27, No. 2, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_(Beethoven)
• Sonata in C sharp minor, op. 27, nr. 2 “The Moonlight Sonata”  http://www.all-about-beethoven.com/moonsonata.html
• Piano Sonata no. 14, c sharp minor - Op. 27 no 2 http://classicalmusic.about.com/od/onestopbeethoven/a/moonlightsonata.htm

Why does it matter? So that you can do analytical things with the infomation. I have been experimenting with importing my iTunes information into an Excel spreadsheet for further manipulation. Unless the syntax of the title field has some predictability, it is not possible to query within it e.g. if I wanted to analyse my classical collection by symphony, concerto or other form. Perhaps the title field holds too much information and should be split up into subfields in order to auto-generate a syntactically correct reference? For this to be do-able, there needs to be an unambiguous way of referencing the pieces.

The plot really thickens when you also consider the orchestra, soloist, conductor etc. Presumably if a standard exists it will cover all of this.

Investigation:

FIRST: An advanced Google search revealed two potentially useful leads:

1. A reference to there being at least four standards. 
   

    http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/lion_elk/

   “Print lists of selected Music or Recordings in four ’standard’ formats - a MUST for insurance. “

   This refers to the fact that they list their stuff in a standard formatbut does not elaborate on what those formats ARE.

2.   RWC Music Database

http://staff.aist.go.jp/m.goto/RWC-MDB/#intro The RWC Music Database is the world’s first large-scale music database compiled specifically for research purposes. Shared databases are common in other fields of academic research and have frequently made significant contributions to progress in those areas. The field of music information processing, however, has lacked a common database of musical pieces or a large-scale corpus of musical instrument sounds. 

This is interesting in its own right but does not exactly address my question. However, knowing that there is an academic area called “music information processing” will no doubt lead me to the experts in the field.

Second: Ask the local experts - ABC Classic FM
I sent a query through the ABC Classic FM website. I received a lovely reply from Graham Abbot who hosts Keys to music. Graham basically confirmed my findings to date by saying that there are no fixed standards. He also confirmed some conventions e.g. Mozart cataloguing interchangeably uses the K or KV nomenclature with a European preference for the KV reference. It appears that the whole field is somewhat ad hoc.

Next strategy - can anyone help? I am now putting the question to my colleagues through some online teacher email lists in search of musicologists while I work out how to access the “music information processing” experts. Meanwhile, any asisstance would be appreciated.

I have introduced myself to iTunes this week, something I have been meaning to do for some time. I have observed my own children, my nieces and nephews and others using such tools, developing their playlists etc and have understood it all at a conceptual level. My personal motivation to get involved was to address my inability to easily tell whether or not I already have particular tracks when I consider buying a new CD - particularly if it is a compilation and especially if it is classical music. I can now know rather than sense that I have many copies of Ravel’s Bolero, Pachelbel’s canon and many Chopin etudes but not Op. 10 No. 3 which is my favourite.

So I set about the task, beginning with Windows Media Player but 300 tracks later switching to iTunes on the basis of some Gen Y colleague’s recommendation. I am still reserving judgement about the pros and cons of each but each do the basic job in a fairly equivalent way as far as I can tell. Contrary to the initial advice given to me they do not use the same default online database.

So I now have several evening’s worth of ripping while doing other jobs, and about 1200 tracks on my computer, fully catalogued. I think I have moved from novice to intermediate user, and have discovered several efficiencies when I want to edit all tracks in a sequence (that is significantly different in the two systems from what I can tell so far).

I have been taken by surprise to witness my own excitement at having my music collection organised in a visual way! I love it! When the mood takes me I can with the stroke of a couple of keys, play all my versions of “I still call Australia home” and decide which I prefer.

As I have experimented, read the on-screen help, played around, made mistakes, it has struck me that many (what proportion I wonder?) of our young learners are using such systems on a daily basis. They are using powerful information systems and I imagine are developing strong  understanding of key concepts in information management. I wonder how they translate that in their learning when trying to understand systems? Will it unnecessarily limit their thinking by being the only example they use in great depth?

I see great potential to use this concrete experience that they have to link fwith their formal learning. I hunted around the ‘net for  examples of educators commenting on this and could not find anything. I’ll keep thinking about this…

A lovely site with examples about representations of information in visually pleasing ways - as the page says “form follows data - towards creative information visualisation.” Thanks to Jenny K for this link.

http://www.infosthetics.com/

Just finished reading the March 2006 Leading and Learning with Technology from ISTE. this journal. This article on plagiarism by J V Bolkan explores various tools that can assist in dealing with plagiarism but above all he emphasises the importance of good teaching:

“The final deterrant strategy, solid assessment and good teaching, can’t be over emphasised. If students understand that they will be graded not only on the artifact they produce (the paper) but also on their understanding of the topic expressed in an oral report, or an essay on “the making of my report”, they aren’t as likely tp copy someone else’s work because they are going to have to learn the content anyway”

 http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/Current_Issue/March_2006.htm#features