Criteria for allowed analysis of specific music

Question

(skip to the "in short" section for the TL;DR)

One of the reasons of not allowing analysis of specific works is that the question and answer might not be useful to many people, potentially useful to the asker only, but that's not the case for all works. In fact, in the case of well known authors and works, that analysis can be interesting, useful, and contain a high academic value, while being important to musical practice and performance.

The idea is to allow analysis requests of specific music as long as it adheres to a specific criteria.

You can find more about that suggestion here: I think we should start allowing the analysis of specific musical works

To re-define the scope, we need to set that criteria.

Which kind of analysis should be allowed?

With the idea of usefulness in mind, I think and propose that the analysis should be harmonic at the very least and cover the work completely (not only selected parts).

Why "harmonic at the very least"?

• It's the most common kind of analysis, so it will be useful to many people (assuming a well known work), and it's relevant to musical practice and performance.

• Prevents questions with very reduced scope and usefulness and/or interest (even within the work), like "what's the time signature of this song?", or "what's the chord progression of this part of the song?", or "which are the chords of this song?". We could still allow these questions as long as they are part of a more complete analysis request (harmonic at the very least), but not if they are asked individually.

Analysis of which works should be allowed?

I'm of the idea of allowing analysis requests for any song. The community can express relevance, importance, and interest into the question via the voting system. We also leave the door open in case someone feels like answering a low interest question. Who knows? Maybe the analysis of that song in particular will be useful to someone else, even if it's not a big well known work at the moment of the question.

Another option is to allow analysis requests only about selected authors, works, eras, etc. We can use a combination of filters to make it as concise and complete as possible. I think common practice era is a must, but we can add authors and works from other periods and styles that are commonly analyzed or have the potential to be. Something like common practice era + Radiohead, Pink Floyd, ... (rock) + Coltrane, ... (Jazz) + etc.

This list of filters can be built somewhat objectively, based on popularity or relevance in the time and/or genre. It can be dynamic, it can accept requests.

The reason I'm proposing accepting all analysis requests without exceptions is that I think that filter list would be already implemented and expressed via the voting system. But who knows, maybe there's a good reason to still have a list of allowed analysis requests.

In short.

If we want to allow questions about the analysis of specific works we need to carve the scope. We need to discuss about:

1. Which kind of analysis should be allowed?

2. Analysis of which works should be allowed?

   • All of them?
   • Some of them? If so, which ones?

So, what do you think?

Answer 1

I think there should only be two requirements for an analysis question.

1. That they have the sheet music(or some notation that shows all the melody and harmony) in the post or link to it.
2. That there is an actual question about the analysis, not just "analyse this for me."

1 is important because without the score the analysis is still possible, but much more time consuming then it needs to be. 2 is important because there really isn't a question if you just want something analyzed for the sake of analyzing it. It kind of defeats the purpose of analysis.

Example

Answer 2

Based on my experience here and other SEs, I think the most important criteria relate to the quality of the question rather than the difficulty of the answer.

To explain: When somebody asks, “What’s the weird scale in this YouTube video,” it doesn’t really bother me that the answer might be very basic. What bugs me is that the only way to answer is by going to YouTube and listening to the whole thing and trying to figure out what the poster thought was weird about it. That’s the sort information that should go into the question. I actually enjoy answering easy questions, so I don’t care whether the answer is basic or tricky.

So I’m happy with any analysis questions no matter how simple. But please do some research effort, and give me enough written information in the question to answer it without needing to listen to random stuff on YouTube.

Answer 3

I think a discussion about criteria will get very abstract. And I certainly don't feel inclined to check the list of things people at one time thought should be allowed / disallowed whenever I feel like answering a question. Just let voting do its job.

Answer 4

1. All.
2. All.

I'd concur that the sources should be readily available (and not subject to copyright takedown - brief examples from works under copyright should be feasible under fair use), and that the questioner should have made some attempt at research and should put up fairly detailed questions.

With these caveats, I'd have to say that restrictions are a bit counter-productive because one never knows when something from one kind of music will be relevant to another. I recall something about the conservative tonal composer Robert Simpson saying that he had learned more about large-scale tonal form from Arnold Schoenberg's (12-tone!) Piano Concerto than any contemporary symphony (and he really didn't like Schoenberg's music).

I'm answering this, though, primarily to bump the question up for further consideration because I think the whole question of analysis is a bit more important for illuminating musical praxis than the policies here assume. I joined here fairly recently, and was a little shocked to see that, when I ran across questions regarding analysis, they were being closed because "only of interest to the questioner"... on a site that is billed as "Music: Practice and Theory". I'm not sure you can have theory without analysis, and you definitely can't have analysis without analysis of specific works. In this regard, music theory is rather similar to the sciences - you need to deal with the particular in order to make a stab at generalising.

The danger of not allowing analysis is that theory can then (and does) tend to devolve into prescriptive "rules", and that is not really what theory is about.

Also germane to the question here is that we need to put aside objectivity as a criterion in favour of reasoned argument. Other than the sounds themselves and (when the music is notated) the notes on the paper, and (occasionally) facts of acoustics, psychoacoustics and sociology (and these latter rarely form a complete explanation for topics in music), there isn't that much that is objective about music (or any other art, for that matter). Reasoned argument based directly on elements of the music is entirely possible, however, and can and should be enforced by the mods.