DTStudy: A Proposal - part 2

Subject: RE: DTStudy: A Proposal - part 2
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jun 02 - 09:33 AM

OK, now I understand. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: A Proposal - part 2
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Jun 02 - 08:42 PM

Following my last comment, and allowing for apathy, I was ready to save my latest comments on "Clare's Dragoons" for a while, but I log in (getting home from the club (1.00 am) and both Clare's Dragoons and Spancil Hill have been reactivated. We must have people who find it easier to put the time in at weekends! So an ongoing "Permathread" listing the DTStudies (McG's term, not mine! *BG*) would certainly be a good idea.
Nigel

Subject: RE: DTStudy: A Proposal - part 2
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Jun 02 - 01:58 AM

The foreign-language lyrics are great for posting at Mudcat. So far, however, few have made it into the Digital Tradition - especially if they are in languages that use other than standard English characters. The fadas and tildes cause too many technical problems.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: DTStudy: A Proposal - part 2
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 05 Jun 02 - 04:29 PM

Sorry to be late in joining the party, but I am fully in support of this project. I've often found the song texts in the DT needed amending, or lacked cross-references to variant versions, so that while the DT can be helpful in reminding me of some elements of a song that I'd been trying to track down, it has also proved very misleading where the version quoted in the DT is somebody's transcription of a song collated from various sources by some revivalist singer(s) so that I've no idea how it relates to the traditional versions.
I'll contribute where I feel I can offer some useful information, in particular where I can indicate field recordings of source singers of a song so that those who want to hear how a song sounded to people who had inherited it via oral transmission in a living community can do so.
I'm working on "George Collins" at present and I'll post the results to a DTStudy thread as soon as I can.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: A Proposal - part 3
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 10:50 AM

I glanced at some Dt threads and the idea seems to be to assemble different versions of one song in one place and to give references to published sources and sound recordings (bibliography and discography). I don't see them being used for correcting ERRORS in the DT.

I had been thinking of starting a DT study about Daniel O'Connell's Steam Engine / Making Babies By Steam but all the information is already in the thread - with very little chitchat.
The main problem is the search engine - although the song in the DT is entitled "Making Babies By Steam", I can't find it on the alphabetical DT list and nor by doing a search of "Making Babies" or "Babies By Steam". A search for "Daniel O'Connell gives me both threads and DT. But if I click at the DT version for forum discussions, I get one message for a thread about nonsense songs to dance tunes. No link to the two threads which contain lyrics, under the title "Daniel O'Connell's Steam Engine".
If the clickie at the DT page sent people to the relevant thread, they'd have plentty of background info.
I don't want to spend time copying sets of lyrics and having to add in the line breaks again. I just wanted the tune corrected and Joe Offer has now been duly alerted. There is a minor error in the transcription - "''An Buachaill_n Donn'" , "Buachaill_n" should read "Buachaillí". It's looking to me as if making corrections isn't the function of the DT study threads.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: A Proposal - part 3
From: MMario
Date: 21 Jun 02 - 11:04 AM

They *can* be; just remember there is a delay of at least 6 months before a correction would be included in a new edition of the DT - which might not then be posted to the MudCat.

Subject: DTStudy: Format
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Jul 02 - 02:23 PM

OK, we've had some experience with DTStudy threads, and they seem to be working quite well. I'm reluctand to do extensive editing on the threads quite yet, because I'm still not sure where we should go with this, and I'm working out some technical stuff with Pene. Let's keep playing with the idea and see how if develops.
For now, here is the format I would like to see. If there are variations, I'll probably edit things to keep them standard.

The thread title MUST contain the title DTStudy:, with a colon and no spaces - (generally) followed by the song title as listed in the Digital Tradition. The first message should begin with the following tag, which you may copy-paste:

<font color=teal size=-2>This is an edited DTStudy thread, and all messages posted here are subject to editing and deletion.<br>This thread is intended to serve as a forum for corrections and annotations for the Digital Tradition song named in the title of this thread.</font><hr><h3><a href=/threads.cfm?Title=dtstudy&age=25000 target=new>Search for other DTStudy threads</a></h3><hr>

After that, the first message should have the lyrics as posted in the Digital Tradition (right-click on the lyrics entry page and do a "view source," and copy-paste the entire text, beginning with the song title and going to the end - omit the garbage at the top).
The first message should also include the Traditional Ballad Index entry, again done by a "view source."
It would be nice to have the first message include links to other threads on the song. If any of these elements are missing from the first message, I'll add them, so don't get overly worried about following format.

The second and following messages should contain commentaries, links, background information, and corrected or alternate versions of the lyrics and tune. I will delete or move off-topic messages.

When I finally get around to editing the study thread, I may leave the original DTStudy thread intact, and create a new summary document, which may or may not be in the format of a thread.

Any comments or suggestions?

Thanks for all the good work Mudcatters have done so far of the DTStudy threads. I've had a lot of fun with them.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: DTStudy
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 08:22 AM

Joe/Jeff, will post this here as help is not working and as Nigel above says as it's not relavant here it can be deleted.

Dave McGlade/ dgmc came up with the excellent idea at folkinfo of incorporating searches in with the song.

There would be other ways but the way we do it involves a little parsing of the song title then building up a link, e.g. for "Admiral Benbow" we produce:

http://www.csufresno.edu//search?NS-search-page=results?NS-search-type=NS-BOOLEAN-QUERY&NS-max-records=20&NS-collection=Ballads&NS-query=Admiral%20AND%20Benbow

We provide a similar search on Gracenote so that users can see if a CD containing a song they are interested in. Here is our gracenote one for the same song.

http://www.gracenote.com/php/search-adv.php3?q=&qartist=&qdisc=&qtrack=Admiral+Benbow&genf%5B%5D=altcountry%2Cbluegrass%2Ccontempfolk%2Cgenfolk%2Ctradfolk%2Cgenceltic%2Cirishceltic%2Czydecocajun&n=10&image=Search

Only a thought but it's quite easily done and I think a very useful feature.

Jon

---

Great idea, Jon. I like to post the whole text of the Traditional Ballad Index entry on a DTStudy song because it coves a lot of ground we don't have to cover again. I really like the idea of the Gracesnote Search. I had trouble narrowing Gracenote down, but you've set the search up very well.
-Joe Offer-