User talk:Andrewa

Hi and welcome. At this date I'm more active on English Wikipedia than here, so you are better to contact me on my talk page there. If you wish to leave a detailed message and have a signon here but not on English Wikipedia, feel free to leave the message here but please drop me a short note at my English Wikipedia talk page just to say I have mail at Wikimedai Commons. TIA. Andrewa 17:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I am happy to correspond in English or French. However bear in mind that your English is probably far better than my French. Andrewa 17:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ici on parle anglaise ou francaise, mais moi je ne parle qu'un tout petit peu de francaise. Andrewa 17:20, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tip: Categorizing images

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Hello, Andrewa!

Thanks a lot for contributing to the Wikimedia Commons! Here's a tip to make your uploads more useful: Why not add some categories to describe them? This will help more people to find and use them.

Here's how:

1) If you're using the UploadWizard, you can add categories to each file when you describe it. Just click "more options" for the file and add the categories which make sense:

2) You can also pick the file from your list of uploads, edit the file description page, and manually add the category code at the end of the page.

[[Category:Category name]]

For example, if you are uploading a diagram showing the orbits of comets, you add the following code:

[[Category:Astronomical diagrams]]

[[Category:Comets]]

This will make the diagram show up in the categories "Astronomical diagrams" and "Comets".

When picking categories, try to choose a specific category ("Astronomical diagrams") over a generic one ("Illustrations").

Thanks again for your uploads! More information about categorization can be found in Commons:Categories, and don't hesitate to leave a note on the help desk.

CategorizationBot (talk) 10:48, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

• Image:Mike Portnoy stack.jpg was uncategorized on 21 July 2011 CategorizationBot (talk) 10:48, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
• Image:Sleishman 1.JPG was uncategorized on 11 January 2012 CategorizationBot (talk) 10:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi!

Hi, I'm really glad to see those images you have been uploading about percussion, that's a great job. I hope you don't mind if I modify some of the images in order to trying to improve its colour, like I did with this one. Lobo (howl?) 11:23, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

By the way, could you help me with finding a good categorization to the drum sticks? I wanted to differentiate between images of sticks for snare drum and other sticks for drums, so I created Category:Snare drum sticks, but I'm not sure if this is a proper name. Maybe it would be better 'drumsticks', and 'drum beaters' or 'drum mallets' for the general category, what do you think? Thanks in advance. Lobo (howl?) 11:41, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Difficult.

• Beater is the most general term. It covers drum sticks, mallets, hammers, and wands, and even found objects, for example the teacups and other objects used by Stockhausen to play the giant tamtam in his Mikrophonie #1.
• Drum stick is a bit difficult. Kit drummers refer to all the beaters they (we) use as sticks; Orchestral cymbal players distinguish sticks (hard) from mallets (soft).
• Mallet has several different meanings. To some it means any beater. To others, only soft sticks. To still others, only specific beaters with little in common, used for bass drum, gongs (but some would say only large gongs) and vibraphone!
• Hammers are used on xylophone (real xylophone from xylos "wood", not the toy metal sort which is really a glockenspiel), and real ball pene hammers are used (with an anvil) in the Blacksmith Polka and similar works.
• Wands are metal rods used for triangles. Probably other metal beaters too.
• Rutes is a word I've only just learned, having played pro-mark Hot Rods regularly since 1985 when they were new, and called them fags or rods. But I'm pleased to see that Vic Firth calls his version Rutes, as he is probably the oracle of oracles on such matters, being an orchestral percussionist par excellence and well respected among kit drummers too. I guess they're drum sticks, but my charts read stix to mark for example a place where I change from Hot Rods to ordinary sticks.
• Brushes seems easy, steel or nylon. Are they sticks too? Tending to yes, but again my charts call them brushes (steel understood) or nylons, as opposed to stix.

And there are probably many more terms. Andrewa (talk) 01:17, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Here's how I'd do it, on reflection but still without a lot of research:

• Category: Percussion beaters
  • Category: Drum kit sticks and beaters
  • Category: Orchestral percussion mallets and beaters
  • Category: Band and marching percussion beaters
  • Category: World percussion beaters

I don't think anything would then need to be in the top level category at all, it would purely be a supercategory and we'd say that in the description page (but unfortunately I don't think the upload wizard would give any warning of this). But several things would be in two or more of the subcategories, and some images might even be in all of them if they contained more than one beater.

The page descriptions of the subcategories would all make it explicit that sticks, mallets, brushes, rutes and other beaters are all included.

If we wanted to go further:

• Category: Percussion beaters
  • Category: Percussion beaters by use
    • Category: Drum kit sticks and beaters
    • Category: Orchestral percussion mallets and beaters
    • Category: Band and marching percussion beaters
    • Category: World percussion beaters
  • Category: Percussion beaters by construction
    • Category: Simple drum sticks
    • Category: Soft headed drum sticks and mallets
    • Category: Percussion brushes
    • Category: Rutes

The categorisation by construction would not cover everything for example metal triangle wands, but that's OK because the one by use would. I can't think of a sensible category for the triangle beater. And I'd guess many world percussion beaters wouldn't fit into simple drum sticks or any of the other three either.

How's that? Andrewa (talk) 06:02, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I think those are basically good categorizations, altought I'm not full convinced about some things. First of all I miss a categorization about what instrument is the beater constructed for, like 'Timpani mallets'. It could be something like:

• Category: Percussion beaters by function:
  • Category: Drum beaters
    • Category: Simple drum sticks
    • Category: Timpani mallets
    • Category: Bass drum beaters (hypothetical)
  • Category: Keyboard mallets
  • Category: Triangle beaters (hypothetical)
  • Category: Gong beaters (hypothetical)

• Regarding the beaters by use, I guess it won't be easy at all to distinguish size or shape and clasify drum sticks as sticks for drum-kit, orchestral or marching use; fit glockenspiel mallets into orchestral or marching use, beaters for brazilian batucadas as marching or world percussion;... However, I don't find any better ideas to fix that and the classification seems ok to me.

• About the beaters by construction, I miss some category about hard mallets (xylophone, glockenspiel or chimes mallets, etc.). Also, I'd rather not differentiate here about drums or any other type of instruments, just any beater for struck idiophones, not only membranophones:
  • Category: Percussion beaters by construction
    • Category: Hard headed sticks and mallets
      • Category: Simple drum sticks
    • Category: Soft headed sticks and mallets
    • Category: Percussion brushes
    • Category: Rutes

What do you think? Lobo (howl?) 09:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

That all makes perfect sense to me. Andrewa (talk) 11:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Then I think I'm going to create the categories in a little while. Thanks a lot for your help and ideas! Lobo (howl?) 13:51, 10 February 2012 (UTC)