Talk:October (Whitacre)

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Comments[edit]

This is more than a good start to the article. It needs several things.

  • On the technical aspect, you have some wikiproblems, although far fewer than I expected you to have, when you said you didn't want to learn wikimarkup. For example, where you have used b and # to indicate flat and sharp, you'll need to insert the actual symbols, which you can do using the drop down menu at the bottom of the edit box (underneath the edit summary), select symbols, and you should be able to find the proper symbols in there. You don't need to use < br> etc at the end of lines. That sort of thing. But you've done very well on this, so good job!
  • A second "technical" point: this needs citations. Big time. I've set it up so that it will take citations and show them at the bottom of the page. You need to insert your citations using this nomenclature: <ref>citation content.</ref> If you have more than one consecutive citation to the same source, or you want to shorten the citations, you can use the templates.
  • A third "technical" point: very few articles link to this one. I'm not expert enough in the subject to know what should link here, but you can figure this out readily enough. You'll need to go to those pages and link back to this article.
  • Fourth, make sure your headings follow the guidelines established for headings. There are also specific guidelines in the Wikiproject Music that should help you with this, and there is probably a wikiproject music infobox that you can put at the top of the article which will provide a summary.
  • Fifth, your lead should summarize your article, not Whitacre's motivation for writing the piece. Thus, it should refer to the structure of the piece, its uses, and its place in the curriculum. The material you have on his motivation can go into the article itself, but it doesn't need to be in the lead. Or at least not in that detail. You don't need any citations in the lead, but it does need to cover the material in the article.
  • Sixth. Be proud of this. Go to the music and education projects and ask for some feedback. I think they'll tell you positive things. Possibly the PA curriculum /standards section is irrelevant, unless you can use it as an example of how the piece can be used to fit state standards. Then you'll need to explain that more clearly, rather than just inserting the standards into the article as a list.

Very interesting piece.  :) Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Offering my help[edit]

I have copyedited this article and deleted some links that are not obviously relevent to the subject matter (after I first tidied them to be in line with the usual standard on WP). Links:

I will continue to see how I can sort this article out. First thoughts:

  • October_(Concert_Band)#Standards_that_can_be_addressed and the following sections (except References, of course) do not seem to be immediately relevent to the piece
  • the template {{music}} includes double flats and double sharps (so we can avoid ♭♭ and ♯♯ for example - click the link to find out how to use it)
  • the article is certainly well written and there are some sources but there are no inline citations to help us contextualise and (more importantly) verify the statements. As pointed out in the deletion debate, the article is open to being seen as pure original reseach without proper contextualisation of at least the most contestable statements
  • although the piece is well-known (even famous) among concert bands, it is almost unknown to everyone else. Unfortunately, even the various professors of wind-band music have failed to publish any papers about this work, as far as I can tell, and all the mentions of it in newspapers and journals merely state that it will be/has been/might be/etc performed: this is not enough to establish notability even under the more specific guidelines found at WP:MUSIC. WP:ITEXISTS might give you some idea of where the editors in the deletion debate are coming from (and see Wikipedia:Existence ≠ Notability).

I will certainly try to source the article as best I can and give pointers as to how to make it more "encyclopedic". See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for the basics of this. Good luck with you assignment! --Jubilee♫clipman 20:00, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Peer Review[edit]

Your article looks great and does a wonderful job of providing every piece of information that a reader could want to know about the piece and/or how to teach it. I don't have any major issues with layout or content, but I think if there is any way to provide a little more background on the piece in the lead paragraph, it may help the reader to gain a better understanding of why they should be interested in this particular work. You do a good job of explaining all the difficult musical terms and making your article accessible to students who may be interested in learning more about this piece. If you can figure out a way to make your double flats and double sharps look a little cleaner it would be nice. Your charts are very informative and it definitely shows that you spent a good amount of time working on analyzing the piece. Overall, I think this article is a great addition to wikipedia. There is a lot one can learn from reading this article. Great Work!Timpguy22 (talk) 15:46, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

possible additional sources[edit]

Just some possibilities that might help. Auntieruth55 (talk) 16:35, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

ideas from edit[edit]

I just copy edited your entire article and then wikipedia would not save any of the changes I made. The biggest things I found are try not to use the phrases "a lot" or "a bit". I also found some specific things that I didn't want to change but I just wanted to alert you to:

"By setting up individual appointment times to listen to the students play a scale in a key from one of the four used in the piece as well as a small excerpt, not only will the students be able to show how they are improving, but the teacher will learn what is and is not working for the students in the class as individual musicians".

This is at the end of the Individual performance (executive) skills section. This is a run-on sentence and is slightly confusing. Try either splitting the sentence up or finding a way to make it more concise.


"The skill of the ensemble as a whole, in many ways, deals more with listening than actually playing. Playing in tune and finding the proper balance throughout the band requires active participation from the students’ ears".

Should not begin a sentence with the same word that ended the previous sentence. Beginning of Ensemble performance skills section.


"The way the parts are written for this piece, every instrument has their time to shine". End of the Musical understanding section. I see what you are trying to say…it just needs to be worded differently.


I will copyedit it again soon and hopefully it will save that time. Good work! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ragfin (talk • contribs) 18:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for working on it, Ragfin. Shame WP wouldn't save. I wonder what happened? Bug? I noticed the Inuse tag, though. Look forward to seeing what you do once you have resolved the save issue. Your comments are useful, though, so thanks for them! --Jubilee♫clipman 17:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just tagged the article to help editors focus on the main problems. Much of the article is either redundant or an unpublished synthesis of published material. Copyediting is a very necessary start, though, I agree --Jubilee♫clipman 18:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to remove Original Research[edit]

The first part of the article, down to the end of the "Technical facility" section, is well sourced. So is the first sentence of "Form and structure". However, the whole of the rest is unsourced and contains material that usually could only be generated by studying the score. That is original research. It is also of very dubious quality. For example the "Harmonic material" section says next to nothing about harmonic material; it mostly just lists who plays the accompaniment in the various sections.

So I propose to delete everything after the first sentence of "Form and structure". We'd then be left with a fairly decent article, I think. I'll wait a week in case there are any objections. --Stfg (talk) 14:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Dubious" tags[edit]

I noted several of the sources as "dubious" because they cite works written long before Whitacre's October was composed and thus could not possibly refer to that work. In fact, at least one of the sources was written before the composer was even born. Without having seen those sources, my guess would be that those sources are discussing certain general principles which the article writer is attempting to apply to October, but that's original research and should not be done, and certainly should not be done in a way that implies that the sources were referring to October decades before it was composed. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:54, 1 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • I removed all the statements supported by publications published before 2000, since they could not have referred to Whitacre's October before he composed it (and in at least one case, before Whitacre was born). As it has been over two years since the "dubious" tags were added, it seemed unlikely that the sources would ever be fixed. If someone has better sources to use, they should feel free to restore the statements with citations to those better sources. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:53, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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