Project:Content rules

What types of things does databrass describe?

databrass has two main types of pages, which can be divided into different subcategories:

• Works, which can be:
  • Method or study book
  • Book - a book that is exclusively text, not printed music
  • Journal article
  • Thesis - includes dissertations
  • Newspaper article
  • Magazine article
  • Pedagogical recording - see What is a pedagogical recording?.
  • NB repertoire (pieces of music) is currently not included in databrass. For more information, see Why doesn't databrass catalogue repertoire?
• People - each person has a single page, but depending on the resource they can serve different roles:
  • Author - this is the primary creator (or creators) of a work and may often be referred to as the composer.
  • Editor
  • Translator
  • Subject - this is the primary subject of a biography, interview, obituary, etc.

What belongs on databrass?

Databrass has an initial focus on trumpet pedagogy. This means the initial works are limited to materials written for or about trumpet playing. General musical references (say, a journal article about practicing) should not be included. Brass resources that are not trumpet-specific should only be included if they are broadly used by musicians on all brass instruments. Here are some examples:

• Don Greene, Performance Success. This is a book about performance psychology that is not specifically about trumpet playing. It is currently not acceptable for databrass.
• Philip Farkas, The Art of Brass Playing. This is a book about brass pedagogy in general, not specific to trumpet. However, it is widely used by all brass players and therefore it is acceptable for databrass.
• Kent Kennan, Sonata. This is a piece of repertoire and is not acceptable for databrass.

For people, only include people referred to by a work on the site. Do not make new pages for musicians, even if they are very well-known. Do not make a new page for yourself, unless you are indexing your published works on databrass. Any person contributing to a work on the site gets a person page, even if they are obscure or not a brass player at all.

Where does information on DataBrass come from, and is there a privacy policy for content?

All information on DataBrass.org is non-copyrighted, publicly-available and published. Information about people such as employment, teachers/students and birthdates are taken from public sources (books, self-written biographies, wikipedia, interviews, etc.). Do not add information to DataBrass from social media or your own firsthand information.

If you are the subject of a Person page on DataBrass and have privacy concerns about the information published there, please contact Aaron.

Why don't you include sheet music or other files?

Databrass does not house any source materials, even those in the public domain. Where available, databrass provides links to websites where users can find source materials online:

• For public domain materials, the best resource is IMSLP.org, linked when possible.
• Several publishers now offer (paid) digital downloads, and these are linked when possible.
• Users can find materials using WorldCat links or through other library searches.

Why doesn't databrass catalogue repertoire?

Cataloguing repertoire is a separate and extremely challenging task. This is a long-term dream for databrass but not within the present scope of the project. There are several obstacles to cataloguing repertoire:

• In general, there is a much larger amount of repertoire than pedagogical materials. This would be a larger project.
• The most useful repertoire catalogue should attempt to categorize it by difficulty in a systematic way. This should be more descriptive than simple words like "beginner-level" or "advanced" and should consider some systems for grading repertoire already in place worldwide.
• databrass is not currently set up, technology-wise, to catalogue things like instrumentation or display music notation.

What is a pedagogical recording?

A pedagogical recording is a video or audio recording created specifically with an educational purpose in mind. This can include:

• Play-along recordings like drones, tuning CDs and accompaniments
• Lectures, masterclasses and other instructional recordings
• Recordings of orchestral excerpts, studies or other exercises created as examples for students
• Demonstration recordings of student repertoire

Why doesn't databrass have information about other recordings?

Since databrass does not catalogue repertoire, a catalogue of regular recordings would have limited use.