I think we should start allowing the analysis of specific musical works

Question

(You can find the discussion about the criteria we could use to allow musical analysis here: Criteria for allowed analysis of specific music)

Analysis requests of specific works (time signature, harmony, etc) are currently not allowed in Music SE. I understand why: "Questions on identifying (or finding) a particular song, genre, instrument, etc. are off-topic since they are rarely useful to future readers."

I agree with this, but I also think this not necessarily applies to all works, and that we are letting that little con completely shut down a very big and interesting pro: the harmonic, objective, analysis of well-known musical works and/or authors, that would be of the interest of a huge amount of people that would find it useful. Analysis of big songs, by big authors. (I know, what is "big", right? I think we can draw that line, bear with me)

We can either:

1) Allow the analysis of all musical works. No exceptions. We will get some questions with a very low interest amount, but what's the worst that could happen? Some questions not being answered? I think that's a very low "price" to pay for opening the possibility of analysis of works and/or composers that carry a lot of interest, that have the potential to generate great questions and answers.

The analysis of less-known works will always carry the potential of being useful to someone else anyway.

2) Allow the analysis of some musical works, based in a criteria set by the community. If we think opening the valve completely is not a good idea, maybe we can open it just a little. We can set some rules. Here are some examples:

• Create a community question once a week (or month, or every two days, or whatever) about the analysis of a specific work or author. We can vote and discuss the specifics of the question (which work, which author, etc).

• Allow analysis requests from only selected authors and/or eras and/or any other filter. Maybe allow common practice works only, or maybe only from specific authors, or whatever you can think of. Again, we can set and discuss the specifics here, in the meta.

• Allow analysis requests only from users above X reputation (I know this is out of pattern with other SE sites, but it might not be a bad idea to implement it on this scenario).

This type of question will likely end up being on topic in the Music Fan SE Proposal, which is close to reach the commitment stage. I think it makes much more sense to have them here.

What do you think?

Answer 1

I personally would like to read (and ask) interesting questions about the analysis of specific works and composers.

However, I am also strongly opposed to basic identification questions like “What’s the key of this song I found on YouTube?” The recent question about time signatures was a bit better, as it actually showed some research effort, although I still encouraged the poster to include more information about the song in the question itself, rather than relying on a YouTube link. If the video gets taken down, we don’t even know who the composer is.

Thus, I am in favor of encouraging analysis questions if and only if the questions also follow the usual Stack Exchange criteria like showing research effort and putting all of the necessary information into the question itself. Those are my recommended criteria.

Answer 2

This is a question we need to take up and resolve as a community, because it hasn't been going away.

We recently closed and reopened a question that effectively asked "What is this compositional rhythmic technique, and how does it work?", and referenced a specific passage of a specific work (see How does one analyze tricky time shifts?). Personally, I would think that is precisely the sort of question that would work on a Q & A forum on music performance and theory - a general question like "What is hemiola and how does it work?" won't cut it because, like most novices, OP lacked the terminology and was unable to recognise precisely what he was hearing. What he was hearing, however, was a technique of very wide utility in very wide usage, and hence of general interest.

My own view on the matter is based on the following premises:

1. Theory that purports to describe what goes on in music is not really possible without analysis. Theory that lacks analysis would be, pretty much by definition, prescriptive. I've run across a few that come close to this latter state of affairs; they were, shall we say, less than convincing.
2. You cannot really teach analysis without something specific to analyse. Analytic techniques that purport to work with everything don't - one size does not fit all, primarily because most analytic techniques are reductive in nature, and thus cannot cover everything of interest. (I'm reminded of the story of Schoenberg looking over Schenker's analysis of, I believe, one of Schubert's symphonies, and saying, "Where are my favourite passages? Oh, there they are, in all those little notes!")
3. The corollary to 1 & 2 is that a lot of questions will require specific examples, and it is in many ways a moot point whether they are provided with the question or by one of the answers (or both).

Note also that the question I referenced above never really changed before it was reopened; a little "syntactic sugar" was added to make it acceptable, and that shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. The OP asked a fairly precise question, and was genuinely interested in how the technique works. When how something works becomes a focus, you will generally get answers of general interest. It may be wise in cases like this, however, to add a tag or two to make the question and answers properly searchable when similar questions come up.

I'm generally in favour of keeping the range of questions open, because it is impossible to know when something in one kind of music may provide pointers for a very different style or genre. For example, I'm learning more about jazz and pop theory here than I have from friends in those fields - not all practitioners are good at describing what they do. This is useful to me, because my classical compositions frequently have a faint whiff of prog and jazz in the background (the stuff I grew up with, eh?).

Broken windows should not be a problem. We do not need to abandon "of interest only to the person asking the question." We just need to cut the tie between that reason for closing and the analysis of specific works. The questions that we worry about cluttering the site, questions such as "What chord is he playing here?" or "What's the time signature here?", aren't analysis, not when a cursory read of any associated sheet music can give the answer.

Answer 3

I can see this working, and I'd support it, however, I think the criteria may be very subjective. Analysis of major composers works (eg Beethoven) I would imagine would probably be accepted, and is likely to be of interest to a large number of music students and hobbyists.

But what about the musical analysis of, say, Baby Got Back by Sir Mixalot - is that likely to tie in with a music syllabus, or general interest in music theory? It might, but I find it hard to see it.

So I'd be tempted to go with your option 2. As regards your sub options, I don't think it is right to limit it to high rep users - we may have new members of the community studying music theory and who happen on this site, so we should encourage them.

Which means we'd need to come up with a straw man for the criteria that could work. You might want to raise a separate question on suitable criteria for objective musical analysis.

I don't think this will be easy, and unfortunately I don't have the formal music theory training to be able to identify the key criteria, but I think if you can build it, and enough members of the community agree with you, then the moderator team will support this. If it works well, we edit the faq and help pages accordingly. If it doesn't work, what have we lost aside from a bit of extra effort?

Answer 4

Broadly, I share @DrMayhem's point of view. And I can see why "musical analysis" and "musicology" questions and answers have been difficult to reconcile with the SE format thus far. But, personally, I would be happy with @JCPedroza's Option 1.

Musical analysis and musicology are always going to be more subjective than purely factual answers, but it would be great if we could trust the "system" to promote or demote interesting and less-interesting questions, respectively. Questions considered to have an interest beyond simply the scope of the piece or song in question, will get voted up by the community, and hopefully receive attention from the wealth of expert users visiting the site. The kind of questions we already try to discourage ("What are the chords in this song?", "What instruments are used in this piece?", "What is the sound at 35 seconds?", will no doubt: be voted down; receive less attention; or at the very least, not be voted up.

Equally, answers that draw out interesting information beyond the scope of the piece/song in question, will hopefully create interest within the community, and so receive upvotes. Those that simply give a "homework" answer ("It goes E A D G.", "The instruments enter in this order: guitar, bass, drums, nose-flute.", "The guitar uses a flanger."), will again; be voted down; receive less attention; or not be up voted.

These more subjective questions and answers may not be ideal for the SE format, but they do (already!) raise us above a mere wiki.

In the six months I've been using this site, I have noticed that the QPD has started to increase, and so we are not "desperate" for questions. And generally it seems that it is pretty obvious which questions are off-topic. It would be great, though, if we could embrace analytical and musicological questions. I am biased, as these subjects are of great interest to me, but I reckon they are pretty important aspects of musical practice and performance.

Having said all this, I largely like the way the site runs already, and I do feel that I would need to have been using the site for a little longer, to be able to make too strong a case for any significant change of focus.

Answer 5

"Questions on identifying (or finding) a particular song, genre, instrument, etc. are off-topic since they are rarely useful to future readers."

I've said it before, and I haven't changed my mind: I believe that the assumption that this is "rarely useful" is false. I agree analysis should be allowed and is in fact very useful.

"1) Allow the analysis of all musical works. No exceptions."

I would be in favor of this. Low quality questions simply won't get answered. Low quality answers simply won't get upvoted. Voila.

"2) Allow the analysis of some musical works, based in a criteria set by the community."

Please, no. This will just result in question voted for closing being discussed over and over on which criteria were or weren't met, to what extent etc and so on.

Answer 6

Music theory is a developing field, but probably not developing fast enough to make a healthy stream of non-duplicate questions likely. If we don't allow specific works to be referenced, Isn't the site destined to die?

It's not like Stack Overflow where there are dozens of new technologies every year to ask questions about. (There are lots of new products, but I find the "how do I do this in this program?" questions are no more likely to be of interest to other readers than those analysing specific works, and we presumably don't want this to become a tech support site).