Topic on User talk:Saarik

Greetings. The subject we have on WD means both technique and type of music (musical genre). And it looks like we don't have throat singing as an instrument on WD. To be honest I find this wording a bit weird and I don't agree with the hierarchy that is made on urn.fi. I think that on WD the hierarchy is already done more completely and correctly regarding this. I think this branch on that site should be divided into voice registers and voice techniques. Throat singing is definitely a vocal technique, and not a subtype of voice itself. Otherwise, along with "male singing voice (Q54285279)" we could add "death growl (Q335499)" and screaming (Q1932016) etc., which are also responsible for vocal sound (Q4393922), not voice type (Q1063547) or type of musical instrument (Q110295396) and which are absolutely just as different from a normal voice as using a throat to sing. The instrument is voice, the others are techniques.

This SEKO vocabulary is used for bibloographic description in the MARC21 field 382 Medium of performance. https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/concise/bd382.html -- (and here the techniques are not mediums). I do not know the history of the SEKO hierarchy, but I think it is made to support and ease the description of musical resources (usually recordings and sheet music) without being a full "scientific" hierarchy.

Its corresponding more internationally known vocabulary is the LC Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT) which is made for the same purpose. See an example of it as the "voice" and its subclasses https://id.loc.gov/search/?q=voice&q=cs%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fid.loc.gov%2Fauthorities%2FperformanceMediums

I've had to create several new Wikidata items for various instruments along the way during my mapping. I'm trying to do better in the future. In this case I just tried to do it simply by adding another subClassOf, although it would create a double branch in the hierarchy. But you did not like that solution and perhaps it is against the general guidelines of WD hieararchy formation, althout very commonly observed?

People on wikidata sometimes mix concepts up just because they don't want to deal with separating them at the moment. But in this case it seems like something that should not have been used like an instrument in the first place. I do not see any mention of throat singing on these vocabulary voice lists you provided either. (But if you think it should still be added, I won't insist.)

SEKO: throat singing in Finnish is kurkkulaulu - http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:au:seko:00562 Its broader concept is lauluääni, "singing voice" (linked to LCMPT: Singer) which is a subclass of ihmisääni "human sound" or "voice" (linked to LCMPT: Voice)

In addition to the mapping, I'm simultaneously trying to create a trilingual version of this vocabulary. Now it is monolingual and all the other language terms are listed as alternative labels. There are several other concepts that need clarification, too. Hierarchies may vary due to many reasons, mostly due to cultural differences or historical reasons. I'm working on this openly and constructive comments are welcome. I am making a translation and I am not able nor willing to change the hierarchy at this point. I think I need to create an issue for myself on this at https://github.com/jarmosaarikko/SEKO/issues