Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music theory

Please add reliable sources. Bearian (talk) 22:51, 26 January 2026 (UTC)

Any objections to marking this project as inactive? Trumpetrep (talk) 02:20, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Given that there are 3 threads on this page in the last 5 months, the last one less than 2 weeks ago, that seems premature. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:21, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Where is everybody? It seems like no one is minding the store anymore, as Shockingsingularity said. It would be nice to have more music theory stewardship around here. Is there an effective way to recruit editors? Trumpetrep (talk) 05:09, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Off editing stuff? What would you like to see happening that isn't? PianoDan (talk) 15:27, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

There are a legion of music theory articles that are so bad they defy description. I recently went through the unassessed music theory articles, and far too many of them were full of policy violations and bad writing. There are currently 18 articles about individual notes, most of which rely on a single defunct faculty webpage as a source, for example. This kind of cruft is all over the place. Trumpetrep (talk) 18:11, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Could you tell us of which articles, e.g. those "about individual notes," you are speaking, so that we could see whether something can be done? — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 21:35, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Of course! I redirected them to musical note, as per the guidelines. An editor objected and undid that. After consulting him and another editor, I nominated the pages for deletion. The discussion is ongoing. It is also listed in the "Article Alerts" on the main page of this project. The lack of any input from editors here is part of what made me wonder if the group had ceased to exist. Trumpetrep (talk) 21:47, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I had not seen these articles, I didn't even know they existed. I fully agree that they should be deleted, or at least redirect to musical note.

The problem that you mention, the absence of reaction from participants to the Music Theory project, is that many of us follow articles about music theory without coming back to the page of the project. This does not mean that the project itself is inactive... — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 17:56, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Good to know. Thanks for weighing in on the notes, too. Trumpetrep (talk) 21:35, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

As mentioned above, there is a species of article here that reads like an undergraduate paper or someone's attempt at a music theory lecture. Their hallmarks include: vast swaths of text without citations, discussion of advanced music theory concepts with a partial or full misunderstanding, and a tone more suited to guidebooks or DIY manuals than Wikipedia.

The harmonic major scale was an example of one. When I encountered it, it read like this. I admire the enthusiasm that went into creating such an article, but it makes such a hash of the topic that it's hard to know where to begin cleaning it up sometimes.

These messy articles are all over the place. Simple articles that you would assume are well-sourced and illuminating are jumbles of text that seem to confuse our readers. Another example can be found at the minor scale's talk page. Years of unaddressed concerns from other editors lead to a neglected and ultimately unhelpful article.

I don't know if there's a will to tackle this problem. Perhaps this mention of it will prompt some pruning. I'm surprised by how often I click on a blue link in a music article and end up at an article that falls short of our most basic guidelines. See Generic and specific intervals, Cardinality equals variety, Transposition (music), Structure implies multiplicity, Diatonic set theory, Bisector (music), Pitch interval, Nondominant seventh chord...Trumpetrep (talk) 22:21, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Several of these problematic articles (Generic and specific intervals, Structure implies multiplicity, Diatonic set theory, Bisector (music), had been created in 2005 by Hyacinth, a now deceased Wikipedian; all of them refer to Timothy Johnson (2003), Foundations of Diatonic Theory, which I didn't read. The problem may come from the fact that musical Set theory (another article created by Hyacinth, in 2003) met with excessive enthusiasm (in my opinion, at least) twenty years ago.

Music theory covers an enormous variety of subjects. As the article says, "music theory exists in all musical cultures of the world." None of us are interested in all of these. An additional problem is that music theory became a controversial subject in the US, as you certainly know.

There certainly are many articles needing corrections or deletion, but none of us can be aware of all of these, merely because even as members of the WikiProject, we can't follow them all – and cannot be competent in all these subjects. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 13:11, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

My suggestion, when you encounter a problematic article, would be to do some combination of the following:

• Improve it!
• Tag it with "needs improvement" tags to alert others to the issue.
• Make comments on the article talk page with suggestions.
• Mention the specific article here, with comments for improvment.

General comments like "Boy howdy there's a lot of problematic music theory articles!" may be ACCURATE, but they're not terribly useful. The editors on here are editing as much as they have time and interest to do, and it isn't possible to create more time or interest simply by pointing out that it is needed. All you can do is try to politely direct what person-hours there are at places where you think they would be the most benefit.

Remember this is a hobby - no one is getting paid for this. PianoDan (talk) 16:08, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you both for this feedback.

The only remaining question I have is about the Cleanup list. Is it better to manually add an article that needs attention to that list or to this talk page? Trumpetrep (talk) 18:16, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

Following User:PianoDan's prompt, if editors are so inclined, I would appreciate them having a look at "Diatonic set theory". I proposed it for deletion. User:UpTheOctave! removed the proposal based on the fact that the topic is notable, which it arguably is.

However, in the 21 years the article has existed on Wikipedia, no one has added a single citation. Its content is a measly two paragraphs. One is simply a list of music theorists. The other is a limpid list of topics and techniques and the remarkably self-defeating statement that "diatonic set theory" is a misnomer.

Would it be appropriate to simply redirect the page to Set theory (music)? As PianoDan and Hucbald.SaintAmand pointed out, editors do what they want, and no one seems inclined to nurture this page into good health. In the absence of such effort, it seems unwise to leave it as is. Trumpetrep (talk) 18:09, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

As I removed the PROD, I'm obviously against outright deletion. I invite others to read my comments on the talk page in regard to notability and potential reasons for deletion. To respond to the above:

• However, in the 21 years the article has existed on Wikipedia, no one has added a single citation – This is a highly specialised topic, so it stands to reason that few editors are interested in it. We should also remember that old standards for citations were much more lax, with simply a source list being acceptable: while this doesn't mean a blind eye should be turned, this is not a reason for deletion in itself per WP:DELREASON.
• Its content is a measly two paragraphs – We can always write more: Wikipedia is a work in progress and, as shown, there is a body of potential sourcing on this topic to enable expansion.
• Would it be appropriate to simply redirect the page to Set theory (music)? – maybe? WP:MERGEREASON#2&5 are the only ones I think may apply (it is not strictly duplicate, the text is longer than a few sentences, and notability has been shown). However, I don't think the overlap is as large as the example of flammability and non-flammability, and the article is still intelligible as is; also, we should remember that we should not merge if the separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles (WP:NOTMERGE) – see my above point.
• it seems unwise to leave it as is – absolutely agreed, but as above, I don't see how this means we should remove the subject entirely. I'm interested to hear other opinions on a potential options.

Thanks, UpTheOctave! • 8^va? 21:00, 8 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Thirty-two-bar form#Requested move 8 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 07:46, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

• Establish a basic set of guidelines for music theory articles.
• Recruit Wikipedians into the music theory project.

Is there any notion of how to proceed on these two stated Goals from the front page of this WikiProject? As I mentioned previously, it would be great to recruit more people to work on music theory articles.

Clear guidelines for articles would also be an asset. I came here to look something up and realized there don't seem to be any policies about content. How would we go about creating them? Trumpetrep (talk) 16:43, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Regular temperament has been nominated for deletion. Trumpetrep (talk) 17:19, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Major thirds tuning has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 03:03, 22 March 2026 (UTC)