A short guide to writing about music /

Intended for all writers on music, college through budding professional, and far more than a course textbook, this brief and inexpensive text coaches writers how to approach, research and write about music. A Short Guide to Writing about Music is written in a clear and conversational style, and empl...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bellman, Jonathan, 1957-
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Pearson Longman, [2007]
Edition:2nd ed.
Series:The short guide series
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • 1: Writing About Music
  • Words about music: why?
  • Choosing an audience
  • Kinds of writing
  • History and biography
  • Style study
  • Analysis
  • Performance study
  • Organological, archival, and source studies
  • Criticism
  • Marxist criticism
  • Soviet pseudo-Marxist criticism
  • Cultural criticism
  • Gender studies in music
  • Postcolonial criticism
  • Author's opinion: clarity and restraint
  • 2: Writing About Music By, And For, Those Who Cannot (Necessarily) Read It
  • What you can and cannot do
  • Concert review
  • Reporting on a news event
  • Artistic evaluation
  • Promoting community interest in music
  • Popular and world musics
  • Crossing the cultural divide
  • 3: Writing Music Analysis
  • Analysis and its uses
  • Analytical content vs play-by-play
  • Analysis without musical examples
  • Technical terminology
  • Two analytical excerpts with commentary
  • Organizing analytical writing
  • 4: Three Kinds Of Practical Writing
  • Program and liner notes
  • Biographical background
  • Cultural context
  • Style and affect
  • Summaries and abstracts
  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Press release
  • 5: Belief Into Words: Opinion And The Writing Of An Effective Essay
  • Presentation and tone
  • Organization
  • Confrontational writing
  • Stylistic excess
  • Writing process: from outline to final draft
  • Benefits of the Suzuki Method / Jessica Mosier
  • Skryabin's mystical beliefs and the holographic model / Jeff Simpson
  • Hints on beginning
  • 6: Research In Music
  • Purposes of research
  • Choice of topic
  • Locating sources
  • Kinds of written sources
  • Non-English sources
  • Reference sources
  • Books
  • Journal and magazine articles
  • Other Web-based sources
  • Recording liner notes
  • Musical scores
  • Use of sources
  • Optimizing research time
  • Don't believe everything you read!
  • Scholarly vs textbook sources
  • Relative age of sources
  • Authorial perspective
  • Dependability of the source itself
  • Special difficulties in using musical sources
  • Citing your sources
  • To quote or to paraphrase?
  • Turning research into writing
  • Foundations of your research
  • On being derivative
  • Whose ideas?
  • Choice of sources
  • Opening paragraph
  • Conclusions
  • 7: Sample Research Paper In Music
  • Gershwin's French Connection / Amie Margoles
  • Commentary on the Margoles Paper
  • 8: Style In Writing
  • Meaning of "Style"
  • Academic style traits
  • Complex sentence structure
  • Obscure words
  • First person plural
  • Passive voice
  • Traditional academic organization
  • Fashioning clear sentences
  • Taste
  • Gender-neutral wording and the pronoun problem
  • Transitions
  • Variety
  • Punctuation
  • Colon, semicolon, and comma
  • Note on hyphens and centuries
  • Specifically musical uses of punctuation
  • Accuracy in wording
  • Ill-advised upgrades
  • Beat, meter, rhythm
  • That and which
  • Accuracy in spelling and punctuation
  • Aggregate titles
  • Awkward wording
  • Toward a personal style
  • 9: Final Manuscript
  • General format
  • Binding, paper, duplication
  • Word processing
  • Copies
  • Title page
  • Spacing and margins
  • Block quotations
  • Bibliography
  • Abbreviations
  • Latin abbreviations and terminology
  • Musical abbreviations
  • Titles of musical works
  • Musical examples and captions
  • Production of examples
  • Captions
  • Citation process
  • Footnotes or endnotes
  • Parenthetical citation format
  • Incomplete citations
  • Abbreviated citation form
  • Sample citations
  • Explanatory footnotes
  • Musical scores
  • Last-minute corrections
  • Index.