The Companion to Irish Traditional Music
new edition, 2010 Writers' guidelines
2nd April, 2009
Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2010
The number of words required is indicated along with the topic; notes on writing style follow. Some details of the new format of this book will be given; these should be useful to your decision-making and writing.
All contributors are additionally invited to suggest changes or provide corrections to any articles (not just their own).
The function of a 'companion' is to provide key data conveniently within a complete, broad and deep overview. It also has to augment other sources in its field, rather than compete with them. Hence the new edition will strive to open up ideas where desirable, supplementing the core data and biographies with much that is not available else where, particularly in relation to how the music is actually played, presented and promoted in the 21st century. Assessment of the need for all changes has been an informal process, but drew on the book’s users - reviewers, performers and aficionados in several countries in addition to Ireland. This, with the panel of writers increased from 109 to 250, it is hoped will render the new edition somewhat everyone's work, and thus more universally useful.
The changes have particular regard to The Companion’s use by a relatively new category, students. Those familiar with the music already know its structural inter-relationships, and just need to get hard information fast. But students and newcomers do not have sufficient information to benefit from A-Z organisation of information alone, and would benefit from the book being broken down – like a text book – into discrete sections on Music, Song, Dance and Analysis The challenge has been to accommodate the conflicting needs. It has been resolved by re-organising all the book's data into a family-tree structure wherein inter-connections are visibly clear, and the reader is given a variety of alphabetical references to check under any desired topic.
Additionally, while most of the original book's information will be going into the new edition, but revised into smaller sub-headed blocs, there will also be significant new material which reflects the great changes in the field over the last decade. Dealing with the main features of the new edition is as follows:
1/ Re-organisation of structure
This involves i/ an underlying database structure, ii/ strictly A-Z visual presentation, and iii/ an index.
The new edition of the book has received research support from An Foras Feasa, with a view to its eventual development as a ‘digital humanities’ resource, either as a digital book, and being available via licence on the web at some point after publication. This in itself has demanded re-design of the structure, suggesting indeed representation of the information in ordered, ‘family’ blocks, within which inter-relationships of items are made clear.
To make this possible as well as retaining the A-Z format, the material will be organised in an underlying structure as a relational database. In this, the three major areas of music, song and dance are used as a ‘stemma’ – a visual, family-tree-style representation showing how each subject breaks down. This may be published in the early pages of the book, but will certainly be available on the web at the time of publication at www.ceolnet.net It will provide a vital support for students’ and newcomers’ use of the book, making it feasible for them to see at a glance which individual article or articles they could consult in order to read up on a subject as broadly as possible.
This stemma will be an equally valuable backup for the old edition, and indeed it will function independently as a basic educational resource in Traditional music.
An index of material not covered in the main A-Z will also be provided to open up rapid access to all information types and some c. 10,000 discrete facts.
Information Categories
Practically, this means that larger subjects will be broken into web-friendly chunks, giving the projected new edition a total of 2100 individual articles (compared to 1100 in the first edition. About 900 of these are completely new, as demanded by upgrading of the information to include a great number of issues and people relevant to the current practice of Traditional music.
The material has been subdivided into 22 separate main categories, each of which has sub-sections, and sub-sub-sections as appropriate to exploring the different layers of knowledge. Thus, in order to avoid overlap, writers of new articles should bear this categorisation in mind, being aware where cross references to other sections should be included, but also that there is a need to keep information strictly to the point. No ranking of importance or prestige is intended in the ordering of these categories, or by the number of articles allotted to each of them. The categories are:
01 Song
02 Music
03 Instruments
04 Music Style
05 Music & notation
06 Composition & Arrangement
07 Dance
08 Story
09 Performance
10 Transmission
11 Recording
12 Broadcasting
13 People
14 Ensemble
15 Organisation
16 Learning
17 Events
18 Print
19 Audiovisual
20 Listening
21 Internet
22 Terms
Sub-sections
Managing the large number of individual articles inside the categories is done by allocating them among potential contributors in a database format. This keeps the inter-relationships in view with regard to the production of the final stemma diagram and web-support structure. Each of these main categories has been broken down to – for convenience – five sub sections:
Section
Topic
Issue
Item
Detail
‘Category’ is the major section, the next level is contained within in, and each succeeding level contained within the one above it. An example will illustrate:
INSTRUMENTS (Category)
WIND (Section)
REEDS (Topic)
DOUBLE REEDS (Issue)
UILLEANN PIPES (Item)
CONSTRUCTION (Detail)
2/ Editing for errors and data change
The second change necessitated by the production of a new edition of The Companion is correction and amendment to existing articles. There will also be select deletions in order to make way for necessary new material. This will render the book as partly additional to the first edition rather than a replacement. However it is proposed that existing material which is valuable in itself will be retained, and, subject to writers’ agreement, made available on a complementary website – ceolnet.net. This web site will be the external reference point for the book, a companion to the companion so to speak. It will make possible live linkage of the book to the huge variety of wonderful internet resources. In this way The Companion can function as a junction for information quests in Irish and related musics. It is not intended as a substitute for the existing knowledge pools which are provided with care by dedicated individuals, but as a route in to them, and a way of using their data efficiently.
3/ Articles
The number of contributors has been expanded from 109 to 250 – this reflecting the great burst in scholarship which has marked the last decade. Much new hard information has been filtered out by researchers over that decade, under the direction of many of the contributors to the original volume, and it seems proper that this should be included to make the book truly a companion – stimulating, provocative and investigative. Some 800 new pieces are being requested from writers, a total of c. 200,000 words, the greater part of it in the area of biography.
The writing style required is academic - objective, and about the issue - no first person comment, no opinion (as such), no PR jargon, no superlatives. Topics are dealt with as an outsider looking in and at, with no assumptions made as to the reader having any prior knowledge. Sentences should be concise - rich in hard facts (names, dates, places, eras), and articles should indicate where appropriate any cross-references to other subjects. Articles on people (performers, stylists, etc.) should state reputation and achievements (awards, recordings, publications and such) without value judgment. The editorial policy is to provide information in the raw, so to speak, free from bias, leaving the reader to fill out opinions and evaluation by follow-up reading or listening. In this regard, the range of topics is derived from standard Traditional-music practices and experience, and indeed suggestions as to additional topics are welcome.
In addition to the overall section and sub sections of which the requested article is part, you may also be given a blurb with a range of terms or ideas. This is necessarily potted information, and not all of it will apply to your topic, so we ask you to read it as mental stimulation, not a prescription. However, the range of coverage it points to is the kind of breadth which we would urge you to consider.
Articles are required typed, ideally in any word processing programme, saved as TEXT, or RTF (Rich Text Format), or as a Word .doc. But any file type will do, done on PC or MAC, and even articles typed or written on paper are acceptable if that is all that is possible. They can be sent on floppy disc, CD, DVD or memory stick, or as email attachments
- email to ceol@imusic.ie and put ‘companion’ in the subject heading
All photographs, negatives, leaflets or publications, transcriptions or diagrams are welcomed; these should be sent to the address below. Scanning of images should be done at the highest resolution possible (300, 600 or even 1200 dpi), and provided on floppy disc, CD or DVD, Zip disc or memory stick - or emailed as attachment. All material required back will be returned immediately, or, if wished, can be placed, credited to the contributor, in the Irish Traditional Music Archive for permanent, public access.
email (subject = ‘companion’) ceol@imusic.ie