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Archive 1Archive 2

Message from a new project member

Being a relative newcomer to the pipe organ, I will not be able to contribute the grand additions/revisions of some of the more learned members. I shall, however, continue to chip in as I have before. As a final note, yes, my account name was inspired by the article and my interest in the organ. Kudos to all who make this place go round.

P.S. I've made a userbox for this project. The link: {{User WikiProject PipeOrgan}} If you don't like it or would like to change it, feel free to make changes. Doublediapason 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome. Thanks for the userbox, I've added it to the template section of the main page. MDCollins (talk) 09:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Organists categories

Before populating the full article list with organists, I was wondering if a category cleanup would be useful. There seems to be organists in lots of categories, but not with any logic. My proposal would be for every organist to be in at least two categories:

and

Then

I don't think that Category:Organists should be used at all, other than as a parent category.

In a similar vein, if populated correctly, List of organists would be redundant - it is a horrible looking red-linked page anyway!

Thoughts? MDCollins (talk) 10:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea to me to tidy this field up, especially (1) getting rid of individual names from Category:Organists and (2) doing something drastic to List of organists (although it might provide a useful reference for future project work). A few further thoughts.
  1. Delete the category of "Popular organists" - isn't there more than a hint of point of view involved in choosing who is "popular"? See discussion below MDCollins (talk) 14:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  2. As for nationality, is there a Wikipedia policy on whether to list as "British", as opposed to "English" or "Welsh" (or Scottish / Irish, but there are no such categories in use for organists at present)? At present, "English" (117 names) and "Welsh" (5 names) are sub-cags of "British", but there are then 4 names in the British section. It makes sense to be consistent not only within "organists" but also, if possible, with other categories e.g. composers, if there is a policy.
  3. How about a Category:Cathedral organists for those who are, or have been, employed in that capacity?
Bencherlite 22:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Re: 1, I think this refers to organists in popular music (ie non-classical), rather than those liked by a lot of people (Rick Wakeman for example) - perhaps a rename of the category. See discussion below MDCollins (talk) 14:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Re: 2, don't know what the policy is, probably to use British but I don't know.
Re: 3, Yes good idea.
MDCollins (talk) 09:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Re:British, I agree that this category should be split into 'home nations' in order to avoid the british category getting too large (although I can't think of many non-english organists)! Beware that we may find some people putting Cornish organists (not that there are any here yet) in a seperate category - the correct category being 'English organists'. MDCollins (talk) 08:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Another thing...! I was a bit unsure as to the point of putting organ scholars, and cathedral organists in classical organists as well!
Therefore, I am moving these as sub-cats of classical organists so for example [[John Scott (organist) will go in Category:Cathedral organists, Category:Organ scholars, Category:English organists, whereas Piet Kee will go in Category:Dutch organists, and Category:Classical organists. MDCollins (talk) 09:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
See FAQs for summary of the above. MDCollins (talk) 15:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Now that I have finished my graduate recital, I am able to work in Wikipedia once again. I just put two organists successfully into their proper categories! I found them because other people tagged them as Category:Organists. While I was there, I noticed that Organist and Organ scholar are tagged as in Category:Organists... hasn't it been decided that this category isn't to be used at all except as a parent category? I wanted to make sure before I ended up changing it. —Cor anglais 16 15:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! If you want some more to categorize, may I suggest you look at the (In)-complete article list and see which categories of organists (I think it is just some of the English and the French) that need adding to that list, as they are probably the ones that may need re-categorizing.
I think that Organist and Organ scholar can stay there, they aren't doing any harm and they can't fit in English organists or the like can they! On another note, would Organ scholar be better as a sub-section of Organist? It seems short, but can't think what else can be added. –MDCollins (talk) 22:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a discussion about the re-naming of Category:Popular organists, extracted from above - struck out text is irrelevant to this discussion, and has been acted on. How about a category for non-classical organists? The likes of Reginald Dixon, for example? The Wurlitzer is, after all, a pipe organ. Guy (Help!) 16:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Is this the best title for the category, does it suggest popularity?MDCollins (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed here as well: rename the category "Popular organists:" perhaps "Non-classical organists" or "Popular music organists?" I am woefully inadequate when it comes to my knowledge of Wikipedia conventions, and especially where to find them, but British sounds good to me. Category:Cathedral organists also sounds like a good idea. —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 11:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Anything to avoid the current confusion between "being popular" and "playing popular music" - "Light Music Organists"?. As for "British", the approach at Category:British musicians seems to be to have English, Welsh, etc as sub-categories of British. So, to conform, I suggest we aim to use English organists / Welsh organists etc rather than British organists, wherever possible. There's more about naming conventions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization I'll create Category:Cathedral organists and put John Scott (organist) in it for now - one of the "popular organists"! Bencherlite 16:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
'Non-classical organists' sounds the best so far (is there a bot we could use to change all of these?) I suppose it doesn't matter if not, because we need to enter each one anyway. MDCollins (talk) 08:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I have raised the Category:Popular organists problem at the WP:Musicians cat-sort project here, to see what they suggest. I think for now, we can continue with the category sort - leaving it as popular organists for the time being, then rename it afterwards! MDCollins (talk) 09:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Discussion now raised at Categories for discussion.MDCollins (talk) 15:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Discussion closed - decision rename, but to what? –MDCollins (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Cathedral organists

Discussion extracted from talk pages of Mdcollins and Bencherlite Hi. I noticed that you asked whether Dudley Buck was a cathedral organist or not. I have probably been going against my own rules, but have used discretion in cases like this and included organists of large-ish/ or many parish churches in this category as well, not just for cathedrals. I know this might create problems, but save another Category:Church organists it kind of seemed logical! MDCollins (talk) 11:52, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, not sure I agree that non-cathedral organists should be in the cathedral organists category. I think you then have a real problem of deciding whether someone played at "enough" churches or a "large enough" church to qualify, whereas "Did he/she play at a cathedral?" should be a straightforward question to answer. I don't think we need a "Church organists" category as well, though - "classical organists" doesn't have to be an empty category consisting only of sub-categories. Shall we move this discussion to the Project talkpage? Bencherlite 12:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Done- maybe you're right. Should be hard to check them, just have to wander through Cathedral organists and check the evidence. MDCollins (talk) 13:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Doh - forgot that Westminster Abbey isn't a cathedral, some to de-categorise there though. I thought seen as the is a complete list of organists for the abbey some nice succession boxes would go down well, so I've started on that. Seems a shame that those in such a prominent post have to stick to being Classical organists! –MDCollins (talk) 17:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Female organists

How about Category:Female organists? There aren't that many on here, but more than I anticipated. Would it be a useful category? MDCollins (talk) 15:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I was initially unsure about Category:Female organists but have checked and found Category:Women in music, with sub-categories including Category:Female guitarists and Category:Women composers. It would appear to fit nicely and (if created) should be added as a sub-category of Women in music too. Bencherlite 20:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Created! –MDCollins (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Baseball organists

I'm tagging the American organists at present, and beginning to think that we need another new category of Category:Baseball organists - still in the C section and found two already (Lambert Bartak and Ray Castoldi)! Bencherlite 20:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Not sure, maybe...When the popular organists category debate is finished and we have done all the sorting, perhaps some more sub-cats of Category:Popular organists would be apparent. MDCollins (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Have found another baseball organist - my tongue-in-cheek suggestion about Category:Baseball organists is getting less tongue-in-cheek now! )(Moved from below) - didn't initially mean it as a serious suggestion, but have found three so far and only up to G. (Aren't there sometimes organists at other American sports?) Agree that decisions can wait until later. Bencherlite 13:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hammond organ players

Would Category:Hammond organ players be more consistent with other sub-categories if renamed Category:Hammond organists? Bencherlite 13:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Possibly... MDCollins (talk) 13:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Category:Hammond organists sounds good to me, and more consistent, though it's similar to the phrase "Hammond organ." —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 13:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Organists and composers in the North German tradition

Should Category:Organists and composers in the North German tradition be placed as a sub-cat of Category:Classical organists? My thought is that yes it should, removing individuals from the latter - unless of course there are some non-organist composers in the category. It is all in the wording. I'll check them as I populate the German organists list. Any thoughts –MDCollins (talk) 16:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed stub

I think we could do with an organist-stub. Before proposing one, I believe we have to see how many articles would require the tag. I am marking these on the article list page, and tagging all relevant articles with "Keyboardist-stub" - the closest I can find! MDCollins (talk) 10:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I have now proposed this stub, current estimate is nearly 100 stubs!–MDCollins (talk) 00:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
And created at {{organist-stub}} –MDCollins (talk) 00:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Speeding up a boring job for humans?

Fun though it is to go through every organist-related category, tag the talk page and check for disambig and redirect pages, can't we ask a bot-owner to do at least the initial tagging for us? How about User:WatchlistBot, for example? Bencherlite 21:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe - but we've probably done most of it. I'll do the non-american organists for a bit! MDCollins (talk) 10:16, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, and I'll do some more American organists. D and E, here I come... Bencherlite 10:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Also, it allows us to correct the categorisation as we go! See the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 11#Category:Popular organists and help me out! Somebody seemed to get the wrong end of the stick. MDCollins (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC) (Done Bencherlite 13:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC))
It looks as though WatchlistBot can be used to perform "maintenance" checking of the categories once a week or so, which would save us having to check for new pages in every category and tag them. Worth rememebering for when we've tagged every blinking organist/organ article?! Bencherlite 11:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Organist articles and categories

I've now tagged all the remaining organists on their talk page and added them to the article list, together with their redirects / disambigs. I finally worked out how to use Auto Wiki Bot to do that, which made life a lot easier! (I confess that once I had used AWB on other things, I was groaning at the thought of having to go back to adding PipeOrgan Project tags by hand!) All that needs to be done is checking the articles for obvious mistakes and category mistakes - Mdcollins seem to be doing that anyway, and I'll join in as and when I can.

One thing that worries me slightly, having spent a fair amount of time recently sorting out categories for other musicians using the standard guidelines, is our classification system for organists. For all other instruments, the standard categorization is nationality/genre/instrument e.g. "Category:American classical violinists". We've ended up with "nationality+instrument" and "instrument+genre", rather than all three elements together, which then means that organists don't fit into the existing structures used for other musicians. For example, Category:American classical musicians can't include organists, because not all members of Category:American organists are classical musicians. Any thoughts? My own view is that we ought to get it in line at some point, and it won't take too long compared to the job of finding all the articles in the first place. I'm happy to carry on with this in the background whilst we improve the actual articles. Bencherlite 16:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Re tagging. Good work mate. I've given up using AWB at the moment as it still crashes every 5 minutes (no idea why). Certainly the category checking is a lot quicker now. I'm intrigued as to how you used the bot to add the article list though...
Load category e.g. English organists. Right-click on the list and click "convert to talk pages". On "more" page, tick to enable Append/Prepend text, then add {{PipeOrgan-project-page}} in the box, click Prepend. Set other options and necessary and edit summary. Click start and off you go! Bencherlite 23:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I can do that - crash permitting, but the inserting in the complete list seemed clever. Probably wouldn't be if AWB would actually work for me...–MDCollins (talk) 09:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I still had to add the names to the article list, together with disambigs and redirects, by hand! That's the slow bit, as you know! Bencherlite 15:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
As for the categories, if that is the way things are going, then we should probably agree - it would reduce the amount we use by one too! Nice and easy with AWB I'd imagine - if it works! Presumably all/most of our main cats (Classical, pop, cathedral) just need sorting by nationality, then the English organists-type cats can be deleted. I'm assuming that the minor categories like Female organists and organ scholars can remain multi-national.
Lets complete the list/checking as it is then construct a new scheme. It will be easier to change them all if they are in the right (wrong!) place to start with...
By the way, the template now contains a "small" function so that we can fix articles such as Freddie Mercury - how did we end up with him? - where the template screwed everything up! –MDCollins (talk) 16:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
We ended up with him, and loads of other non-pipe organists, because we haven't restricted ourselves to pipe/classical organists. Should we? My inclination is that we should - my "expertise", such as it is, is more likely to be in this field than it is on commenting on the pop-music-playing organist of a band... Bencherlite 22:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Category for deletion discussion - Hammond organ players

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 April 21#Category:Hammond organ players is up for deletion. A chance for us to have a think about what to do with this category. Bencherlite 22:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think if this is to be deleted, they should all be put in Category:Pop organists - personally it doesn't bother me, but the precedent might be useful. It depends on whether anyone has the expertise to deal with the non-classical organists anyway... However, I'd keep move the cat to a subcat of Pop organists or just the contents. Any thoughts –MDCollins (talk) 22:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC), –MDCollins (talk) 22:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
No, absolutely not a subcat of Pop organists! Please do not mix musician-by-instrument categories into instrumentalist-by-genre categories! There is a well-established categorization scheme for musicians at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization; this project does not need to develop its own independent categorization scheme, and doing so will only result in confusion and conflict. If you have trouble understanding the existing scheme (and I admit that it can be a little tricky at first), or if you simply aren't sure how to deal with non-classical organists, I'm sure that people from the musician's workgroup (including me) will be more than happy to help. Please do not put any more organists in the pop organist category unless you are sure that they actually qualify as being in the pop genre (this means no rock, no hip-hop, no funk, no jazz, no metal, no punk, no folk, etc.). Pop organists should not simply be a reject pile for this project. If you aren't sure how to classify them, please leave them in Category:Organists! Or (looking at some of the category members) if it's someone who merely happens to play organ among other keyboard instrumentals, he may not need to be subcategorized into the organist tree at all. (A good example of this last would be Roy Bittan.) Or call for help, as I mentioned above. While I am not a member of this project, the project should feel free to call on me at any time for tricky categorization problems, as I spend a lot of time working on musician categorization. And if I'm busy, I may be able to recommend some others who do the same. Cheers, Xtifr tälk 12:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I knew this would be a problem when Category:Pop organists was created. This category was renamed from Category:Popular organists to remove the unintentional POV related to this name. It was assumed that this category was for the non-classical organists which is where they ended up. If Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization wants to deal with this they are more than welcome (although they didn't seem to come up with any suggestions for the name change at the time) see this. As you probably remember from the CfD, which you commented on, here, this ended up being renamed to something even we weren't comfortable with. I agree that the naming for that cat is substandard, and we are aware of the need to bring our categories into line with WikiProject Musicians so help would be appreciated.
This all stemmed from the excessive use of Category:Organists (like your view on Category:Keyboardists and the need we felt in separating the pipe organ players from the rest due to the different styles and techniques involved. My view is that Category:Hammond organ players is actually a poorly titled instrumentalist-by-genre category however it looks. We do not want to cause problems with you or your project, of course we should work together. The organist category was in quite a mess until we started to deal with it, and we are in no ways complete. In fact, we do not really intend to mess with the non-classical organists, but will be happy to assist in sorting the mess. Thanks for taking the time to explain your views, can we try and agree on a way forward? –MDCollins (talk) 13:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I remember the history of the pop organist genre. The name itself is acceptable as a subcategory of Category:Pop musicians by instrument (to which I just added it), but most of the articles in there don't belong there. As for Hammond organ players, that is absolutely not a genre! Members of the category include Count Basie (jazz), Gregg Allman (rock), and Rod Argent (pop). I agree with, support, and am overjoyed at, your efforts to reduce the size of Category:Organists, which should, ideally, be empty, but the main problem I see is that you haven't made your tree deep enough, so you get distracted by notions like "type of organ", when, if your tree were fully populated, most of the categories would already be quite sparse. For example, Category:German classical organists should be a subcategory of Category:German organists by genre, Category:Classical organists by nationality and Category:German classical musicians by instrument. Each of those "by X" categories, in turn, should be a subcategory of a category with the same name, but without the 'by X". Category:American jazz organists, likewise, would be a subcategory of Category:American organists by genre, Category:Jazz organists by nationality and Category:American jazz musicians by instrument.
Note that once you have a tree this deep, subcategorizing by type of organ (which is already a subtype of keyboard) is really excessive. Which is why I argued at the CfD for removing the Hammond cat, and am against Electronic organist or Pipe organist subcats (though I'm least opposed to that last one).
If you just want to get articles out of Category:Organists (which is an excellent notion) and aren't sure how to categorize non-classical organists properly (the articles should contain useful suggestions for genre, thouugh I admit that I am frequently stumped as to how to interpret a described genre), then I recommend simply moving the non-classical organists into organist-by-nationality categories for now, Very few articles will omit the nationality, so that should be easy to do in most cases. The organist-by-nationality categories should ideally be nearly empty too, but that can wait until someone finds the time to create appropriate by-genre subcategories and diffuse the articles into them. Xtifr tälk 14:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your helpful comments, Xtifr. You may have noticed that I made the point about needing to classify by genre as well as nationality in a previous section of this talk page (and you'll see if you look at my user page that I'm doing this for plenty of instruments at the moment, including the previously unsorted categories of Category:Violists and Category:Oboists ). We (by which I mean MDCollins!) have nearly finished round 1 of the category sorting, and then I'll go through and add in the "classical by nationality" and other genre sub-cats. Perhaps we should have realised the problem earlier, but that's water under the bridge.
As for Hammond organists: (a) I agree that it's not an ideal category, although it's not as bad as Category:Steinway pianists would be! It might be better as a list, such as List of Moog synthesizer users and I'll suggest that; (b) my suggestion more generally is the people in that category, and also "Pop / Jazz Organists", are more likely to fit better under the "Keyboardists by genre/nationality scheme" (where we already have rock and heavy metal keyboardists) and we should keep Category:Organists for players of pipe organs rather than players of electronic keyboards. And for these purposes I'm going to overlook the fact that some "pipe organists" play electronic substitutes in places of worship or concert venues e.g. Carlo Curley and his travelling organ, or it'll get too complicated! Thoughts? Bencherlite 16:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Hmm...I'm a little dubious about the possibility (in practical terms, given the great mass of random Wikipedia editors) and the desirability of repurposing Cat:Organists (and its subcats) to cover only pipe organists. But on the other hand, I agree that most pop / jazz / rock / etc. organists tend to play keyboards in general, and at most a very few will be, strictly, just organists. So I'll reserve judgment on that part for now, and see how it plays out. And for everything else, I think we're basically in agreement at this point. Cheers, Xtifr tälk 20:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Good - I think we are getting somewhere! Thanks. I think I get it now too, very good instructions Xtifr. Just one clarification for me please, you say that if we don't know where to put the non-classical organists (ie those in Category:Pop organists you suggest we put/leave them in organist-by-nationality (for example Category:German organists) and then leave others to deal with finding Category:German rock organists type cats - is this right? Would it be easier for WP Musicians if all the Category:Pop organists and Category:Hammond organ players were all moved to Category:Keyboardists (and Keyboardists-by-nationality) for effective sorting? –MDCollins (talk) 22:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The answer to your first question is yes, that's exactly right. Although if you happen to notice that someone is really a keyboardist, and not just an organist, you can put the article in, e.g., Category:German keyboardists instead. As for Cat:Hammond organ players, I have listified the category at User:Xtifr/List of Hammond organ players. If the category is deleted, I can simply go through the list and put the articles in appropriate categories by hand. And of course, if we want to keep the list, I can move it out of userspace. So I now recommend changing your position at CfD to delete or listify and delete (your choice). And as for Cat:Pop organists, I'll simply go through that now and see if I can empty it. If so, we can just delete it; otherwise, we'll discuss it further. Xtifr tälk 05:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Recategorizing Category:Classical organists to Category:Fooian classical organists

I've made a start on Category:Classical organists, with the help of trusty AWB, and when that's done, I'll turn to Category:Cathedral organists and put names from there into Category:Fooian classical organists as well. Apart from that, I plan on leaving Category:Cathedral organists untouched - i.e. not deleting it from any articles, but not subcategorizing it by nationality either, since otherwise it is too much of a duplicate of Category:Classical organists. Any other views? Bencherlite 00:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep that's exactly what I was planning to do. The three categories Category:Cathedral organists, Category:Organ scholars and Category:Female organists don't need touching or recategorizing. I'll give some a go as well. Bear in mind the French still need checking, unless you've already done so! –MDCollins (talk) 08:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Nearly done. I've also delisted the pop/hammond organists from our article list and remove the project banner from the talk pages as well. –MDCollins (talk) 11:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder about the French. Many, but not all, will be covered as we go through Classical organists, turning "French organists" and "Classical organists" to "French classical organists". We can then tidy up the rest when we weed out the "Fooian organists" pages one by one. Can't use AWB at work, unfortunately, otherwise I'd carry on now... Bencherlite 14:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Progress report - Category:French organists now empty, all moved to Category:French classical organists. Category:Classical organists is now also empty of articles, and just has its subcats. Bencherlite 23:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Progress report (2) - all members of Category:Cathedral organists are also in the appropriate Category:Fooian classical organists. That covers most of the work, I think - now all we need to do is check the members of Category:American organists, Category:English organists etc, pick up the ones we've missed and boot into touch (or into Category:Fooian genretype keyboardists, whichever is easiest) the ones we don't want! Bencherlite 00:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
All booted to keyboardists by nationality for now. Seems a good place to put the 'wrong' ones so somebody else spots it, and reclassifies. I was wondering what to do with the theatre organists, Reg Dixon and the like, because although 'classical' they are more light/popular, so I put them in the generic keyboardists for now until somebody else works out where to put them. The baseball organists were the same, in fact all of the hammond/wurlitzer types - guess its not really our concern! Is that categorization and linking and tagging complete then? A milestone reached if there ever was one. Can we do some real articles now?? –MDCollins (talk) 09:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Hooray, job done and page updated to reflect the fact. Good work, MDC. What, real articles? Can't we just play with categories for ever?! Bencherlite 09:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


Organ stop revision

I just attempted a revision of Organ stop, and I believe it is now a better article, though it certainly needs more cleanup and information. Much of the text is pulled and revised from Pipe organ. I ended up commenting out a good portion of the article because it confused the definitions of stop and slider (the latter of which never showed up in the article). This begs the question: how shall we incorporate various chest actions (slider chest, spring chest, cone chest, Pitman chest, etc.) into the organ articles? Should they be portions of Organ stop or their own separate articles? Does anyone have a good enough understanding of these mechanisms to write about them? Am I bringing this up way too early in the life of the project? —Cor anglais 16 17:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I would have thought that an explanation of the various chest actions should be all in one action, not Pipe organ but possibly one of the others. You might be bringing this up a tiny bit too soon - we might need to get the more mundane tasks out of the way first!–MDCollins (talk) 23:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Organ portal?

So I was comparing some of the organ-related articles in the English Wikipedia with their corresponding organ-related articles in other languages, and I came across the "Portail de l'Orgue" at the French Wikipedia: http://fr.wiki.x.io/wiki/Portail:Orgue

In addition, I found information on portals in the English Wikipedia.

This "Portail de l'Orgue" looks really cool. Can we do this on the English Wikipedia? Does it make sense to? Is there already one I don't know about? —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 21:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we can do this. I think it would be really useful. Lets add it to the list of things to do. Perhaps, I'll create a list of things that need doing to get this project up and running. There are still a few maintenance things to be done from setting up really. –MDCollins (talk) 23:49, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
The French Wikipedia Organ Project also looks as though it has some useful material that we could steal use for inspiration, although my GCSE French gets me as far as buying "un croque-monsieur, s'il vous plais"... The creator of both the Fr Project and Portal is Sonusfaber, whose talk page says that s/he speaks English at a near-native level, which might be useful if we need to ask for help or guidance, either with the Project/Portal or for matters French. I'm sure that there would be things that we could help them with in return - they have a list of articles that need writing, including Simon Preston and "Georges" Guest, for example, that we might be able to at least start off in schoolboy French for them. Bencherlite 00:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
In fact, this got me thinking - there must be material on organs at other Wikis. If we have members with language skills, then the article text might be useful. At the very least, photographs etc are almost certainly going to be re-usable under standard Wiki licences (and even if we can't understand the article we can probably work out what the caption says). For example, the German Wiki organ page has a plenty of pretty pictures, some sound files, even an animation of the mechanics of wind entering a pipe when the key is pressed. The Italian Wiki organ page has as its lead photo a shot of the Bristol Cathedral console(!); the Spanish Wiki organ page has some fine horizontal trumpets on show; even more photos and sound files at Wikimedia Commons. Might be useful to remember when we move from project page tagging to writing / improving articles. Bencherlite 00:26, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Yep. I think most of the photos are in the commons, so an easy access link to that would be really useful, as I think by definition, if they are in there the licenses are fine for this Wiki too. I've got average French and mostly forgotten German which have proved useful in the past, especially when expanding Olivier Latry. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mdcollins1984 (talk • contribs) 00:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

Have you seen the portal?? I've given it a go, it is still work in progress but the 'box portal template' is really easy to pick up and maintain. Any suggestions welcome. I am aware that the chosen articles and pictures etc need to be vetted for quality, but I have just chosen these to demonstrate how it works for now (also we seem to have few articles of a decent standard anyway!). –MDCollins (talk) 00:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this looks great! I'm all for it. I can't think of any suggestions for improvement at this time, but I'm sure sometime in the life of the project we'll have a good enough start to make the portal really spiffy. I had no idea we had such a nice shot of the Roskilde organ! That needs to be somewhere in Pipe organ.—Cor anglais 16 02:43, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Was just about to post saying I've updated the portal a bit in order to remove it from Category:Portals under construction - but it got deleted! Think I prodded it by mistake. Hopefully by the time anyone reads this it will have been recreated. –MDCollins (talk) 16:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Organ Builder

The article Organ builder is being tagged with lots of cleanup type messages and is potentially a candidate for speedy deletion. Is it worth trying to save the article? –MDCollins (talk) 11:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I think List of organ builders would be a good place for the list; it could also be material for Category:Organ builders Category:Pipe organ builders, if the category proves a better idea than the list. Other than that, I don't think we can use that article at this time... maybe down the turnpike we can put together a decent article on organ builders, but personally, right now, I can't think of anything I'd put in one that would turn it into a decent-sized article. At any rate, the list needs to be saved in one form or another, with appropriate wikilinks to the organ builders' articles. —Cor anglais 16 12:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Have moved, see talk page for further work. I'll get onto this sometime soon! –MDCollins (talk) 18:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Succession boxes for titulars

I just got an idea: would it be helpful to have a standardized succession box for titular organists of French churches and cathedrals (other countries, too, but the French are the folks that really dig the titular system)? I think that would be really cool somewhere down the line. —Cor anglais 16 15:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe yeah. I think we could do with getting a few people together to work on the changes above (like Pipe organ and the stop/pipes etc - ie the basic clean-up). It seems everyone is rather busy at the moment. –MDCollins (talk) 22:32, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

List of notable pipe organs

I think that the pipe organ pictured in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir article should be added to the List of notable pipe organs. It would be a great addition to the list. Arya 23:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

This organ used to come up quite a lot when the list was in its old format at the Pipe organ page. It was never really made clear why this organ was notable, other than for the sake of the choir. What do other participants think? If a paragraph could be written explaining its notability, then maybe. Perhaps a section on the organ could be added to the choir page itself? –MDCollins (talk) 23:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, from the things I've seen, there's a few distinguishing characteristics about it. Depending on who's counting, it ranks in the top 15-25 largest in the world...built by G. Donald Harrison...11,600+ pipes. Other than that, I really couldn't see anything overly special about it. Doublediapason 19:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this all quickly turns into an issue of semantics: what makes an organ "notable?" Is it historicity, size, tonal design, visual design, unique features or mechanical/electrical characteristics, the person who built it, the person who played it, the persons who played guest recitals on it, etc.? I don't know that there are any answers to these questions. This is not to say that the Mormon Tabernacle organ is or is not notable. Rather, the list itself is my concern. It seems to me to be a collection of random information. I think that if an organ is notable, it should have its article, and I think the the Mormon Tabernacle organ qualifies for its own article. Separate articles for "notable" organs would clear up the list issue, and would likely reduce the number of instruments described as "notable" by a large amount. —Cor anglais 16 00:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
"I think that if an organ is notable, it should have its article" ...or its own sub-article in a related church/building-type page. I think this is a good idea. The list was originally created in order to remove material from Pipe organ anyway, I think it may serve as links to pipe organ articles (although would a category do? - maybe not if the organs are infact sub-articles). Then they can be reduced to one-line summaries if necessary. I toyed with the idea of adding pictures to that page, which of course would be a stupid idea! –MDCollins (talk) 09:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Pop organists redux

I've almost finished cleanup on Category:Pop organists. There are seven articles left:

  • four sports-venue organists (background music for sporting events),
  • one radio/tv organist (background music for old-time radio shows and early live television shows),
  • one San Franciscan theater-organist of unknown genre, and
  • one eccentric organist from New Orleans of questionable notability and unknown genre.

I'm inclined to toss those last two into Category:American organists for now, since I can't see anything better. The rest might all fit into some category together, if we can think of a good name for it. Category:Background music organists doesn't seem quite right, but it's the best I've come up with. The other option is to create both Category:Sports venue organists (to match Category:Sports venues) and Category:Radio and television organists. Thoughts? Xtifr tälk 15:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Tricky one that - I found the same with other theatre organists such as Reginald Dixon and Horace Finch who are currently in Category:English keyboardists...–MDCollins (talk) 23:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Tricky, I agree, but we need to find a home for them, otherwise someone will just throw them back at some stage. Feel free to ignore all that follows...
We can then tag Category:Pop organists for speedy deletion after 4 days, and it can always be recreated if the pop music world requires it. Bencherlite 00:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

There's also the option of making lists. Not everything has to be handled through the category system. We could have List of sports venue organists and then just classify all of these by nationality (since no genre is really mentioned). Xtifr tälk 02:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would work too, probably better (although this time we need to check that the list doesn't already exist!) <humour> In view of our discussion elsewhere, should it be "sports venue organists", "sports venue organaists", or "sports venue organ players"?! </humour>. Bencherlite 16:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Fell across this category again on my travels. I've boldly made various changes as above. I haven't created List of sports venue organists but maybe some other time... Bencherlite 18:49, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Sandbox

I've decided that having created a sandbox for my organ pipe revision (can anyone assist?) that it would be better in project space, so I've created some sandboxes at the top of this page. –MDCollins (talk) 14:47, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I like it! I'll be glad to assist. —Cor anglais 16 22:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Be bold - we are in project space after all...–MDCollins (talk) 22:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Organ pipe revision

After my difficulty last week attempting to clean up Organ stop, I looked at Organ pipe this afternoon, and my attempt met at much more success. I have restructured the article and significantly expanded it, but it is (of course) by no means complete. Since I'm new to the concept of WikiProjects, I'm assuming that the place to announce major initiatives/work done is here on the project's discussion page. If it's not, by all means, let me know! I removed the section on diaphones from Pipe organ and put it in Organ pipe in order to trim down the larger article some. Furthermore, the diaphone is not nearly significant enough a topic to warrant the kind of space it was taking up in Pipe organ. —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 22:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I wonder whether in this case, flue and reed pipes should have most of the information on their articles, (if they indeed warrant them, rather than an all inclusive Organ pipe), and then simpler descriptions at Pipe organ. Perhaps this should be our formal miniproject - cleanup and populate Organ pipe, Flue pipe and Reed pipe, then edit the main page accordingly. Can I suggest we leave Pipe organ as it is for a moment, get these other articles up to scratch, then tailor Pipe organ accordingly?
I am happy for Flue pipe and Reed pipe to remain as such, as long as Organ pipe is kept an eye on, but could they be incorporated? What do others think? The diaphone paragraph definitely doesn't require its own article as the material isn't nearly substantial enough.
MDCollins (talk) 09:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that miniproject sounds like a good first coordinated project. I also think that leaving Pipe organ alone for the time being is a good idea. Regarding Flue pipe, Reed pipe, and Organ pipe, I think the first two articles should be the main articles regarding their respective subjects (i.e., reed pipe construction, beards on flue pipes, rudimentary voicing descriptions, etc. would go in Reed pipe or Flue pipe, respectively), while Organ pipe should contain more general information related to organ pipes (i.e., pipemaking information, end construction, pipe shape, metallurgy, acoustical physics, and anything else that applies to both flues and reeds would go in Organ pipe). —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 11:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at the working page in my user space User:Mdcollins1984/Organ pipe that summarizes what I feel should be in the main Pipe organ article (so far from Pipes Ranks and Stops through to Pitch) , then a rewrite of Organ pipe - a slightly more expansive article which leaves room for the more detailed information to be found in the individual specific pages. Feel free to work on it how you see fit, then we can roll out the changes. –MDCollins (talk) 13:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Working page moved in to project sandbox –MDCollins

I have just finished a cleanup of the organ pipe revision… I think you're on to something here; most of the information currently in pipe organ can definitely go to more specialized articles. I didn't excise a lot of this information this time around, but we certainly could. Does anybody have any ideas regarding exactly how broad/specific pipe organ should be? —Cor anglais 16 02:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

My rationale was to keep pipe organ as broad as possible, while pointing to the specific material elsewhere. The simpler we can explain it, while getting all the terms in the better I think. Hence the proposal to almost cut the console section directly to a new article, with a far simpler/shorter explanation in pipe organ. It also shortens the article quite a lot, which is another plus point at the moment. I notice we disagree on the spelling of "label(l)ed". Never mind! –MDCollins (talk) 08:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think we disagree on the spelling of labelled; Firefox kept flagging it as misspelled. It makes more sense to double the L in these cases across the board (cf. "misspelled" in previous sentence!); thus, I have just updated my Firefox dictionary. —Cor anglais 16 12:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Weird - Firefox was flagging the single l as wrong. Interestingly, it is flagging Firefox as wrong! –MDCollins (talk) 12:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I just edited the page again... made a couple minor changes and added some comments. In the spirit of the vision for pipe organ articulated above, I flagged elements of the page I would take out with five parenthesis: ((((( ))))). I did this expecting that I would find much more to flag than I actually did. For some reason, I feel like the article is simply too long, but it's probably just me being paranoid (what for, though?!). —Cor anglais 16 01:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
And now I have edited the rest of the page. Incidentally, I've been referring to this kind of editing as "cleanup" in my edit summaries, not because what was already there was in any way "messy," but because I've seen that term used before in other edit summaries, and I don't know what else to call it! I think your proposed organ pipe revision is great... the only thing in the current live page that isn't in the proposal is the section on variations in timbre, but I'm not sure that section is very useful as is. I don't know why we can't go live with the proposal soon. —Cor anglais 16 02:18, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Things to think about:

  • Remove divisions/manual orders to organ console, perhaps with a pretty table. In time, this may be expanded into an article of its own. Have removed
  • Stop column positions - I'd be tempted to leave this...
  • I've moved the 'stop' paragraphs from pipes into stops
  • "Pull out all the stops" - can't find a suitable place for this, am tempted to just cut it. What do you think?
  • En chamade/off chest - not sure really, doesn't flow where it is, but I think it could stay in the article...

I've now gone live with the organ pipe revision, as it seems fairly stable. –MDCollins (talk) 09:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I have just incorporated all of the information from the bottom of the page Sandbox (save the lead) into Flue pipe... boy, that article needs a lot of work! —Cor anglais 16 20:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Done - gone live, edited a bit of the wind system/casing bits as well. Its reduced pipe organ by 20kb, very worthwhile I think. Probably some minor changes to make, but they can all be done in situ now. We can then get pipe organ into a really decent article now I think, then perhaps tackle some of the subs. –MDCollins (talk) 10:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have taken the chance in the last few days to copyedit Organ pipe, Flue pipe, and Reed pipe, making an attempt at standardization (especially between the latter two articles) in terms of section headers, definition of terms, wikilinking, etc. There's very little referencing at this point, and they could use some more images (which I think W0lfie is working on), but I think they look better now. Organ stop is still a nightmare, as the term itself means several things and is almost impossible to define without summarizing all of Pipe organ. This all may need to wait until after the Pipe organ FA push, but I thought I'd write a short update. —Cor anglais 16 15:33, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I ran into some technical difficulties with the flue pipe drawing I was trying to make. But I think I've resolved them. It turns out, it's harder than it looks to make a 3D model of the pipe mouth.  :-) I should have started with a wooden pipe, I guess. --W0lfie 20:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

FA push for pipe organ

Hi,

Looks like pipe organ is nearly ready to become the project's first FA. The peer review came back very favourably. For my mind there are a couple of issues I'd like to address for my personal satisfaction before we go to FA nominations:

  • Shore up the referencing, perhaps add some more in the middle/latter sections - (I'm in the process of checking all the weblinks and giving full citations for those)
  • Sort the pictures out - I wonder if there are too many, or if a Gallery section would be nice. There was a nice construction schematic on an external I found, but haven't looked at copyright to see if we can use it. I'll track it down again...
  • Some of the development section on Baroque/Romantic needs another couple of sentences to flesh them out so they don't look like stub sections (also the pictures overrun and look messy at that length).
  • One final copyedit wouldn't go a miss to!

Any other thoughts people want addressing?

–MDCollins (talk) 20:24, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

More later, but have you checked the French and German Wikipedia articles on the organ/pipe organ for images? As I recall, they have some pretty sweet schematics of action, etc. The famous Dom Bedos drawing of the guy with the sword playing the cutaway organ would be neat, too, if we could get it. —Cor anglais 16 13:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

No, good plan! - we have now had a slightly more detailed peer review, with some more work to be done! –MDCollins (talk) 14:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

There are now some automated peer review recommendations linked from the peer review page. So far I've attempted to address the issues with section headings and weasel words. I have also created a basic infobox that we might be able to use. Some of the items in the box may be difficult to define (range, for example… there are several to go through!), but I think it would be helpful and lend a more professional look to the article. —Cor anglais 16 02:01, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Whoops: forgot to link to the infobox… it's in sandbox 2 up at the top. —Cor anglais 16
I'd hadn't considered the use of an infobox, I don't particularly like this one, but that's a personal opinion. Its implementation is fine, I'm just not a fan of the template in general. Anyway, that's beside the way. The range as you say is difficult, do we use the keyboard range, or the audible one, in which case assuming 16′ as the lowest on most organs, the bottom note would be an octave lower. As for the upper range...? I've adjusted the type of instrument as its position in the article it links to!, and shuffled some of the other articles around.–MDCollins (talk) 09:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I have been wondering the same thing ever since I saw the instrument range template. I think that the way it is now is pretty reasonable. The written range is how all the other instrument info boxes are, so that makes sense. And the note about registration is about as concise as possible. I wonder about the "related instruments" section in all the other instrument info boxes. What would be considered a related instrument? Harmonium? Piano? Flute? Carillon? Electronic Organ? Also, the classification is a little tricky, too. I guess the Keyboard (aerophone) is about as NPOV as it gets. Sure there are percussion and idiophone stops, but this is about pipe organs. -W0lfie 18:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Update - I've found a few more references, am working through the article noting things that will need citations at some point. I can't see much else wrong with the article, so lets keep pushing. –MDCollins (talk) 10:46, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Illustrations from other wikis

I was looking around at the other versions of the pipe organ articles. It seems like the Japanese version has quite a few illustrations that would look good in the organ pipe and construction articles. If you guys think it would be worth it, I'll try to edit some of the images so the labels are numbers, rather than ideograms. I don't know how much time I'll have to do it, but I think it would really help the articles. W0lfie 17:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I for one think it would be worth it… especially in Reed pipe and Flue pipe could we use good images and schematics. —Cor anglais 16 23:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Cool. I'll give it a shot over the next few weekends. It's probably a multi-day task. Cheers! W0lfie 18:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
I've started working on the flue pipe. I was wondering if we could use the stop/key air flow drawing in the French wiki [1]. -W0lfie 04:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
I like it! Just have to translate it from French into English… I don't know how that fits in with the licensing. —Cor anglais 16 01:22, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
CC-BY-SA, should be fine as long as we link to the original. I'm still working on the pipes, so I won't be able to get to this other one for a little while. --W0lfie 17:52, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I added a cross-section to the flue pipe article. I ended up doing it from scratch, but it was inspired by one of the other images. I want to upload a .svg version of it, but I can't figure out how to get the various programs to talk to each other. The next task is a similar cutaway of a reed pipe. Hopefully I will get to it sooner than two months. Sorry It's taken me so long, but real life has been a bit hectic. --W0lfie 13:39, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow… I love the image! Keep it up! Hope taking care of baby doesn't totally burn you out. —Cor anglais 16 15:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Voicing

Is there an article on voicing? I couldn't find it if it's there. Unfortunately I know very little about the art of voicing, otherwise I would take a crack at writing an article. Its importance to organ building is undeniable. Surely deserves its own article complete with a history of the various techniques and applications over the centuries. Since tuning has its own article, it seems like voicing should, too. Maybe I can find some good books about it once the library construction is over. -W0lfie 04:16, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

The closest thing I know of is Organ flue pipe scaling, but that's not really voicing. There is a provisional voicing section in Flue pipe, but there's nothing in it. The "Variations in timbre" section there used to contain some voicing information, but it's been incorporated into the rest of the article. In short, I don't think we have one. A real voicing article would be great if we can manage it. —Cor anglais 16 05:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Just found this [2] thesis. Very interesting reading, and the sources cited are varied. I thought you guys might like it, and it may help spur some ideas for a voicing article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by W0lfie (talk • contribs) 17:21, 16 May 2007 (UTC).

Future project - simple

Anyone up for editing simple:Pipe organ once the full article has reached FA? –MDCollins (talk) 08:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow… sure; that looks like quite a project! —Cor anglais 16 16:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I was just reading that article last weekend. It sure could use some work, all right. Does the simple Wikipedia have its own style guide and vocabulary recommendations? -W0lfie 17:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
No idea! Just as simple as possible I guess...–MDCollins (talk) 07:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Pipe organ

Hi,

Sorry for not doing a lot over these last couple of weeks - been busy working on getting another article to FA status. Ready for completing Pipe organ now. Anyone else ready for a combined push?? –MDCollins (talk) 10:52, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for a combined FA push. What do people think needs to be done to it? IMOH, we're just about ready to request a FA review… I don't think there's any shame in potentially failing it, but I'm running out of ideas to improve the article, and if that's the case with other people as well, it might be beneficial to see what the FA reviewers think. The only two sections that don't have any citations are "Console—Couplers" and "Repertoire—Overview," which shouldn't be too difficult to repair. There's also that one pesky {{cn}} tag in the lead, but other than that, I think the article looks pretty good. Thoughts? —Cor anglais 16 02:01, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I've played with the lead a bit more, removing that un-citable sentence. Reorganised the wind section again, as we linked twice to it from "windchests" but it didn't really explain them that well. The content is fine, we should all read the prose carefully to make sure it is tight and coherent, and find those refs.

–MDCollins (talk) 11:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of finding references, I have added a couple. I cannot find anything in print (that I own, at least) that will reference unification etc. or percussion stops. Do we need to reference the labeling of draw knobs? Also, does anyone think we are relying too much on any one reference (in particular, all those Cambridge Companion refs I add!)? —Cor anglais 16 21:55, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Just a thought: if anyone has Sandra Soderlund's A Guide to the Pipe Organ for Composers and Others, this will reference what I mentioned above, as well as much more about the practical matters of organ playing. —Cor anglais 16

I've added the remaining missing refs, as well as some in the repertoire section. It now looks good for a nomination to me. I wouldn't have thought the nomenclature needs referencing, and why should the 'definitive' reference not be used a lot - it is hardly controversial, or expressing POV is it!! You happy Cor? –MDCollins (talk) 10:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks really good… I only bring up the issue of relying too much on a particular reference because of what I found at #11 here and at #3 here. It's probably not a major concern, though, as everything that needs to be cited is cited, and we have a pretty good mix of print and online sources. I just ran through the article to copyedit once more, and I think it's a go. Woo hoo! —Cor anglais 16 16:19, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

What about the infobox? Shall we leave it out for now, (I'm sure someone will mention it)—I like it as it is at the moment, but that's preference for you. Lets go for it. –MDCollins (talk) 16:49, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I like the infobox, and think it should be included. I wish all the instruments had an infobox. Do we need to include Category:Female organists (or the other sub-categories)? --W0lfie 20:13, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the basic cat is ok, no need for the subs. I've imported the article into the infobox sandbox to see how it looks. There's a lot of wasted space. If anyone can think of a way to remove it, I might tolerate the infobox! I'm not happy with it the way it looks at the moment...–MDCollins (talk) 09:23, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm… I like the idea of the infobox, but in the sandbox right now it really doesn't look that great. Also, pretty much all of the information from the infobox is somewhere in the article… except for range; maybe that could be incorporated into "Console:Keyboards?" That's really my only concern. Maybe we can leave the infobox out for now and see if the FA folks want one; if they do, direct them to the sandbox and ask for suggestions? —Cor anglais 16 11:19, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I just added range information to "Console:Keyboards". as I was typing it, much more ended up coming to my mind that isn't covered in the article: ravelement, split sharps, variable keyboard ranges depending on nationality and time period, "half-range" manual keyboards (as in the Echo manual of a French classical instrument), keys that don't play the note they otherwise would (as in some ravelement cases where the low C-sharp key plays AA), etc. I have incorporated some of this; do we want more, or does some of this not need to be here and would rather sit at Organ console (or a future article on French classical organs or the like) instead? I put in one {{cn}} tag as well, denoting the AGO specifications for keyboard range. But we may not need the AGO reference after all, but just a general statement on modern range convention (which would probably also need to be cited). Sorry to bring all this up at such a late stage in the game, but certainly the basic keyboard range information needs to be part of the article… what does everyone think? —Cor anglais 16 20:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering about that just the other day, when I noticed a change that said each pipe only plays one note. I thought "well what about the rare pedal pipes that play both CC and CC#" Then I thought about all the other stuff that is uncommon, but that a professional organist would expect to see at some point in his career: split-keys, toy stops, haskelled basses, etc. The organ has such variety that it would be impossible to include all of the technical esoterica in the main article, but there is plenty of room in the smaller articles like console and pipe. --W0lfie 17:12, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that in line with our clean-out (!) a few months ago, only the bare minimum should be left in pipe organ. Fleshing out, can be done in organ console -or elsewhere if it gets too big. History of the organ keyboard could be interesting! –MDCollins (talk) 18:54, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I removed most of the range paragraph from Pipe organ and placed it in Organ console, where it can be dealt with at a later date. I think History of the organ keyboard would be a great idea, but it too will have to wait. There's still a {{cn}} tag, but it could be filled in if somebody has the AGO pamphlet on organ console specifications. Are we ready for an FA review? —Cor anglais 16 16:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. Reworded slightly but have found a reference. I'm ready. Unfortunately I'm on a break from 28 June-2 July, so you'll have to deal with what you can until I'm back and able to help. Alternatively wait a few days - but I'd just go ahead! –MDCollins (talk) 22:22, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Pipe Organ FA review

I have just made a few more small edits to Pipe organ and nominated it for FA review… the discussion is available at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pipe organ. I'll do my best to catch whatever the FA reviewers throw at it, but if everyone could please watch the discussion and help out that would be great! —Cor anglais 16 19:37, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Pitch

This is something of a redux of my recent comments at Talk:Organ pipe, since they have to do with the project in general. What do we do about the definitions of pitch terminology? It makes sense in Pipe organ, but if we need to re-define it all in Organ pipe, Organ stop, and future articles about stop and wind action (which is certainly likely), that's a lot of redundancy for people to read. Should there be an Organ pitch stub to which we link from all the articles that require this terminology? Or perhaps a short template of some sort?

I don't think the section adds much to the pipe article in it's current form, since the only mention of 16' 32' etc. comes in the diaphone subsection. If the length nomenclature were used extensively in the article, then I would agree that it's necessary to include a brief explanation. Besides, the meaning of 8' etc. is covered quite well in the Organ stop article, with it's own subsection, which seems like the logical place for it.
What's more pertinent to the Organ pipe article is that the pitch and the length are related. Longer pipes are of lower pitch than shorter pipes, all other variables being equal. We could also mention that an open flue pipe has a low C that's approximately 8' long. We could link to the pitch and length subsection for those who want to learn more about that. What do you think? --W0lfie 17:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, you've got me convinced: you're absolutely correct. I will embark presently to add that information to Organ pipe. —Cor anglais 16 03:36, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
And done… it's not exactly elegant, but the information is now there. Copyedit away! —Cor anglais 16 03:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I've edited what you've done. I've linked to the pitch section in organ stop - if that gets moved, remove the link! –MDCollins (talk) 11:57, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Category: Female organists is up for deletion.

The discussion is here. Bencherlite 23:00, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

It's gone! –MDCollins (talk) 22:39, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Erik Suter - Deletion

Erik Suter - any thoughts? Just wondering about any precedent set here, and whether it affects us. I guess this probably fails notability and isn't much of an article to lose really, but say for example it was a full length article would deletion be considered?

Think I'd be happy for it to go though... –MDCollins (talk) 22:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to deletion - the "used to" language bothers me. If it were rewritten such that he's a recording artist - which he is, with a significant discography, it might be salvaged. - Philippe | Talk 00:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Just to let people know I've started various organ pages and added organ info to various other pages, as follows:

This is just a start - I hope to continue adding more. - Vox Humana 8' 22:37, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Good work. When I get time, I might give them all a look, see if I can add anything. You might like to check that they all have the project banner on the talkpage and add them to the Wikipedia:WikiProject PipeOrgan/Article List so we can track the recent changes. –MDCollins (talk) 07:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Created section Downside Abbey#The Organs.--Vox Humana 8' 12:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

John Sanders

Since someone on a church music forum I frequent pointed me in the direction of three obits of John Sanders, I've created an article on him at John Sanders (musician) (John Sanders is now a disambiguation page after I moved an American Theologian from there to John E. Sanders). Feel free to copyedit, expand further, correct catgorisation (I based cats on the Stanley Vann page) etc., etc.. David Underdown 15:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

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