This article is in the process of being split from the ten-string guitar article, and may well end up being merged back there... we'll see how it turns out. Splitting was a suggestion of another contributor at talk:ten-string guitar, and does solve for example the problem of what to do with the Partial bibliography section from that article, which has become the Further reading section here. Andrewa (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One of the potential problems with this approach is that it could become a content fork. That's obviously not a danger right now as I'm the only active editor of either article. Andrewa (talk) 23:22, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The split is looking a better and better idea... The section on history is already larger than appropriate for the more general article, and the sections on repertoire and references should expand to be so. Andrewa (talk) 17:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Repertoire

It would be good to list some specific pieces under some or even all of the modern composers who have written specifically for this instrument. Andrewa (talk) 17:07, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tunings

Details of scordatura tunings, in particular those reputedly used by Yepes himself for his lute music transcriptions. Andrewa (talk) 17:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Andrewa (talk) 09:10, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

I've said the question of to what extent these various other stringings and tunings compromise this aim is somewhat controversial, but is it really? Frankly, this is currently based on the archives of talk:ten-string guitar and the history of that article, in which one particular contributor took a soapbox stand defending the Yepes tuning and attacking all others, as he has also done in various blogs and discussion groups. A reliable source to show that this view has support would be good. In particular, something by someone who realises (as Helmholtz pointed out long ago) that the theory of music is based on physiology not just physics.

The original Yepes tuning appears to me, like the ten-string itself, to be something of a fringe view at present. Most classical guitars still have six strings, even those sold by the Ramírez company, whose most noted luthier invented the modern ten-string. And most ten-string players use other tunings. I could be wrong here, and I don't want to stray into WP:OR. But mainly, some evidence would be good. Andrewa (talk) 17:59, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed my mind about that... my best guess following a great deal of ongoing discussion at http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/10string/ is that the Yepes tuning is most common, followed by baroque/romantic, with Marlow last of the common three stringings. Still a bit speculative, and no reliable secondary sources to cite. Andrewa (talk) 17:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Marlow's list of publications with Mel Bay (including no "Approach Guide"): http://www.melbay.com/authors.asp?author=1675

Amazon.com lists the publisher as "Janet Marlow Music LLC (April 2005)", not Mel Bay: http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Ten-String-Guitar-Approach-Guitarists/dp/1599752611/

I happen to have a copy of Marlow's Approach Guide in its DVD format: clearly self-published.

Viktor van Niekerk (talk) 03:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quite right, thank you, and my mistake evidently. Mel Bay has published work by Marlow, and cites her as something of an authority on ten-string guitar, but the method does appear to be self-published. Andrewa (talk) 09:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I thought long and hard about this longish name. The obvious altenative is nine-string classical guitar, currently a redirect here. I didn't choose that because it would include harp guitars and the decacorde, but I wouldn't be all that upset if the other name were chosen, and the article rescoped to match the name. Andrewa (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

These edits by Viktor appear to be promoting his POV with regard to ten-string tuning.

The link he has added to his personal website is wikispam IMO.

The link he has removed is the best I can find to set out the various tunings. I'd love to find a better one. While I don't wish to comment on the rest of the site, there is no misinformation on the particular page to which I linked.

Both sides are describing the same eight notes being provided by the same four resonant strings. Whether that is four "resonances" or eight is a non-issue.

I'm not for the moment going to remove the links or even update them... I'm thinking carefully about how this is best handled.

See edits to:

• Narciso Yepes
• Ten-string guitar
• Ten-string extended-range classical guitar

and possibly others. Andrewa (talk) 02:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#Administrator has been misusing his status to launch a personal vendetta which may be an attempt to prevent me from removing his new links. As I said above, I'm not yet decided whether I should or not. Andrewa (talk) 19:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

It would be great to find a reliable secondary source for the Yepes/Modern, Baroque/Romantic, and Marlow tunings.

Here are some relevant websites, none of them perfect:

• http://www.tenstringguitar.info/ is Viktor's new site. This particular page only describes the basic Yepes/Modern tuning, and not the variations to it that even Yepes himself used, let alone the other common tunings; I have not explored the rest of the site to see what else might be there.

• http://www.tenstringguitar.com/tuningsforthe10string.html is Janet Marlow's tunings page, poorly formatted, but gives all common tunings including her own, which are probably the least used of the three sets. Marlow's method for the ten-string, self-published, seems to be the only one yet available, and she has some works for it published by Mel Bay Publications. So she is a more authoritative figure than Viktor, at this stage.

• http://tunings.pbwiki.com/ is one of my own personal wiki websites, titled The Online Encyclopedia of Tunings. It specifically exists to publish information that isn't verifiable to Wikipedia's standards, so it's not much use to us here obviously! And it's early days yet, but it does already have what so far as I know is the best page on the web on ten-string tunings, see http://tunings.pbwiki.com/Ten-string-guitar for these. It even cites some of its sources, mainly in the public archive of the ten-string guitar Yahoo! group.

• http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/10string/ is Stephen Bright's Yahoo! group, on which tunings have been a frequent subject, partly owing to my asking questions. Many knowledgeable and/or notable performers on ten-string belong to this group.

I'll try to get to a paper library sometime... Andrewa (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I should point out that Marlow's site is the only one of the four above that doesn't fall foul of WP:LINKSTOAVOID. Viktors' site fails criteria 4 and 11, my site fails criterion 12, and Stephen's fails criterion 10. All three could be argued to fail other criteria as well, but that's enough IMO. Maybe in a year or two my wiki might scrape in... Andrewa (talk) 13:14, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Time to act

I don't wish to attack Viktor personally, but as he's replaced a link to another website with one to his own personal website, with the edit summary removed site with proven MISINFORMATION, I think we're justified in asking what his authority might be to make this particular judgement.

I've done a couple of Google searches, each on a name plus the word "guitar"... Note that your results may differ in the details:

Viktor gets 469 ghits, most of them relating to his own personal websites, and the first few pages of these hits mention no publications other than self-published ones.

Janet Marlow gets 1390 ghits, including Mel Bay Publications, Amazon, and many other seemingly independent sites.

So I tried Amazon:

Viktor gets no hits at all.

Janet Marlow gets four, including her self-published method and a volume of music published by Mel Bay.

This web page gives a bit of Viktor's biography... Viktor van Niekerk (b. 1981, Johannesburg) is presently a Doctoral candidate at he University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He has been active as artist and academic in various performative, visual, and literary disciplines. Since 1995, he has concertized exclusively on the modern 10-string guitar. He studied performance with guitarist Fritz Buss (a long-term student of Narciso Yepes), Belgian conductor Bruno Brys, and Australian musicologist Dr. G. Florian Messner. Committed to both standard and contemporary art music, he devotes time each year to the transcription of baroque lute and keyboard music or guitar as well as supporting new music. Composers from South Africa, Australia and the U.K. have written works specifically for him. In addition to musical activities, he has lectured on mythology in contemporary art, literature and cinema at the University of Johannesburg. His interdisciplinary doctoral thesis examines the confluence of music and myth as performative tropes and structural elements in the novels of Nobel laureate. JM. Coetzee. Another ongoing research topic involves the acoustics of the modern 10-string guitar and the technical innovations of Narciso Yepes. He has been invited to Madrid by Yepes's heirs to continue his research in the late maestro's personal library.

This is very carefully worded, and there's no information there at all about his level of attainment in the relevant fields. This is not to say he has no expertise, he obviously does. But there's nothing here to support his authority to pass judgement on Marlow.

Now to his new website, the target of the links he has added. It gives little useful information. Only Yepes' basic tuning is given. The site does not even give the retunings that Yepes himself used. And it criticises other tunings, but it does not even say what these might be. Marlow's page on the other hand lists all the common tunings. My own web page lists several others in addition, all of them used by noted performers, supported by links to such sources as interviews with the performers themselves.

Viktor's autobiography reads Viktor van Niekerk has taught at universities in South Africa and Australia, and has been active as a scholar and artist in a number of visual, performative and literary disciplines. Since the age of fourteen he has concertized exclusively on the Yepes 10-string guitar, inspiring new works and dedications from a number of composers, including the late David Hönigsberg's four-movement African Sonata. Presently a Doctoral candidate, his inter-disciplinary work on mythology, music and the writings of Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee has attracted praise as a "challenging, innovative, important" thesis. Another ongoing research project centres on the acoustics of the ten-string guitar and the technical approach of the late guitar master Narciso Yepes (1927-1997). He has been invited by the heirs of Yepes to continue his research in the master's personal library, Madrid. Van Niekerk studied the ten-string guitar with Yepes's long-term student Fritz Buss between 1995 and 2007.

Again, there's nothing to support his right to pass judgement on Marlow there. It's much the same information as above.

The point of all of this is, IMO the link to Marlow's tunings page should go back. It's not the best website in the world, but for our purposes it's far more useful than Viktor's.

I'd prefer to leave the other pages, and the links to Viktor's new site, alone for the moment. I don't think anyone will mistake Viktor's links for anything other than wikispam, and I hope that anyone interested in tunings for the ten-string classical guitar will come to this article to find them.

Nor do I propose to link to my own tunings website. It fills a need, but a reference for a Wikipedia article is exactly what it was not set up to provide. Andrewa (talk) 14:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resolution

I left this for a few hours, and another editor has done what I proposed above. Thank you! It really does help.

As indicated above, Viktor has supported this latest attempt to promote his POV by a personal attack against me, claiming at Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests Administrator has been misusing his status to launch a personal vendetta. This claim is false, it's had no support whatsoever, several other editors there have commented to this effect, and it will shortly be archived I expect.

It's not the first time that Viktor has claimed that I have a vendetta against him, both on Wikipedia and on other Internet forums, and I don't want to give the claim any credence. But nor can we allow him to restore his soapbox to Wikipedia, which appears to be his goal. Quite apart from the POV itself, I keep finding more newbies who have left Wikipedia after experiencing Viktor's personal attacks in defence of "his" articles on Yepes and related subjects over the past year or so, and we are now rapidly approaching double figures.

Obviously, the involvement of other editors is critically important if more of this is to be prevented. Andrewa (talk) 12:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]