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There is a new tag. So far it only has one question, so I'm not convinced that it is necessary. The first point of discussion is whether we need it...

Second, if we do need it, what should it cover? Anything ever intended for performance in a church? What about other religious traditions? Is this about the hows/whats of performing at church services? etc.

Where I am now, I don't see the need, but if someone (the tag creator?) can better explain what the intended scope is, it might make sense.

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  • Well, the tag has now already after 10 days a total of 3 questions in it. One is also tagged hymnody and another is also tagged liturgical. The third is not tagged with any other "church-music related" tag, but is about songs in hymn book so I guess hymnody would fit there.
    – awe
    Oct 28, 2016 at 13:02

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The tag was requested by the person who wrote the question. A person with more rep created the tag for him.

It's important to remember that "church music" is actually a genre, so to me it makes sense to have a church music tag just like it makes sense to have a jazz tag or a classical tag.

Some stuff that might fall under that category:

  • Questions regarding how hymns are historically played

  • Questions regarding improvising church music

  • Questions regarding playing an instrument in the church music style,

  • So forth.

For example, the other day I asked a question about picking patterns for hymns and whatnot on guitar. I could certainly have tagged it with Church Music. I think I will.

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    TIL "church music" is a well defined genre. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_music
    – Dave
    Oct 20, 2016 at 1:18
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    I was the one that created the hymnody and church-music tags, and this answer is exactly what I was going to offer! Although hymnody is a subset of church-music, church-music is not always a subset of hymnody. Bach cantatas, music for the liturgical year, etc. all fall under church-music, not hymnody, so I felt they were suggestions good enough to be created.
    – Richard Mod
    Oct 20, 2016 at 16:49
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    Wikipedia may consider it to be "a thing" but I think church-music is such a broad term as to be fairly useless as a tag. What's the value of lumping together everything from plainsong to contemporary gospel music into one category?
    – user19146
    Oct 20, 2016 at 21:54
  • @alephzero That's a fair point. It might be a little bit broad, but I think that it captures an aspect of the genre that maybe a set of more specific tags couldn't.
    – General Nuisance
    Oct 20, 2016 at 22:28
  • @GeneralNuisance I'm struggling to think how you could categorize a single "genre" of music that includes both plainsong and gospel. Perhaps they are both about concepts like "worship", "praise", etc but those are not musical categories.
    – user19146
    Oct 21, 2016 at 20:17
  • In general, I'd prefer not to have tag that are too tightly coupled around concepts that are tangential to the site. While the genre of something may influence the way we look at play and compose things, even the best defined genres are typically not set in stone and fluctuate quite a bit with time and location. It's also a detail that can go in the question itself rather then have a tag as we've done for other concepts that don't reallyneed a tag (like for example we don't have major, minor, diminished, ect tags, they are just details in a question).
    – Dom Mod
    Oct 24, 2016 at 20:47
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At the moment, it doesn't seem useful to me. Both questions currently tagged are better served by IMO.

You could call church music a genre, but then you could call "K-pop" a genre - the latter wouldn't be very useful as a tag here though, as it doesn't really add much specificity from a theory and performance point of view, and therefore isn't a useful filter (which is what a tag is supposed to be). I think it's the same with .

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