Talk:Musical instruments

Purpose of this article

I think this is a good topic, but how should we cover it? Certainly, we can cover buying instruments and also visiting instrument factories. Should we also cover visiting museums, such as the Musical Instruments division of the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the museum in the Forbidden City that exhibits beautiful ancient Chinese classical instruments? Probably. I doubt we want to cover hearing performances of instruments, but if we do, I understand that Israel is a good place to hear taqasim on the 'ud. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:14, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

You’re generally thinking along the same lines as me. We can’t include every music store in the world, but there are factories, really important stores, etc., that we can. Museums is another possibility. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 13:28, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm reconsidering about performances. I think it's reasonable for us to mention Romany/Sinti violinists and where to hear them, where to hear great kora players and so forth, when there are specific places where you can hear a concentration of amazing virtuosi on particular instruments. As we discussed on your user talk page, whenever the article gets too long, we could split off different sections of it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:47, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Then we may as well add that information. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 21:53, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

What's wrong with "guitars"?

While I agree that "orchestral" is not the best classification for cellos, violins, etc., I really don't see anything wrong with using headings like "brass" and "woodwinds" for describing groups of instruments. These are general terms used to describe the instruments and I don't think anyone is seriously going to think they are bigoted.

The same is true with "guitars". Everyone knows what a guitar is — it's a lot more straightforward than "Plucked string". Whether or not a guitar is called a guitar in every country in the world, "guitar" a term that won't confuse anyone, while the definitions of what is "plucked string" could get much more confusing and complex. Again, I really don't see any point in changing these to other names. Is calling a plucked-string instrument a guitar seriously making a political statement? Not to me it isn't. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 20:28, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I suggest that we call the section "Guitars and related instruments", since everyone will know what that means. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 20:49, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I didn't say "bigoted"; I said "ethnocentric". Any article about musical instruments worth its salt will not focus exclusively on Western classical instruments. Plucked strings encompass lutes, lyres, koras, sitars, vinas, guitars, ukeleles, lutes, harps, pipas, shamisens, kotos, zithers and many other instruments. As for "brass" and "woodwind", I simply don't think it's necessary in a travel article to distinguish between different subfamilies of wind instruments, but we could always revisit this if the article becomes overly long. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:24, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you are saying. I think I've got an idea of how to do this section better, and you can change if you don't like it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 21:29, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Travel focus

I really don't think we want to give general descriptions of the use of instruments nor potted histories of them. I would suggest we cover only destinations for buying, viewing or hearing performances of individual instruments or in some cases, families of instruments (e.g., a Gypsy violinist may play in a group with other strings). Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:22, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, okay. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 23:02, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Museums

I came across this on WP: w:Category:Musical instrument museums. Many of the museums listed are general museums which have a few instruments, but there are some more specialist ones that could be listed here. AlasdairW (talk) 00:02, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

That would help a lot. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:04, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Relevant text moved from Christianity:

Gulangyu is an island in Xiamen, China that is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, mainly for fine architecture from a period of European occupation 1840s-1930s. It has both a piano museum and an organ museum.

These museums could be listed in this article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:56, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Listings added. Pashley (talk) 05:55, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Scope

I don't think a museum about jazz is about musical instruments. If we let things get away, this article could become entirely unfocused and unmanageable. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:47, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I listed that one as there are jazz instruments on display. w:List of music museums has a list of all music museums, and there doesn't seem to be that many outside Europe. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 08:45, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

In that case, it's in scope, but the fact that they display instruments needs to be mentioned. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:33, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Listing details

Per Wikivoyage:Travel topic article template,

"If you add listings to specific venues, the full listing should go to a destination article. The listing in the travel topic article should describe the venue in the context of the topic, to help the reader to know whether they are interested. Details, such as street addresses, prices and phone numbers, should be omitted from the travel topic article. Instead link the full listing, or the section or article containing it."

I've removed the listings details from the article, ensuring that they are in the city articles. Please don't add any more. Ground Zero (talk) 05:42, 11 May 2023 (UTC)