Talk:New-age music/Archive 1

Archive 1

New Age music survived vfd. Per discussion it is now on the cleanup list. See: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/New_Age_music -- Wile E. Heresiarch 21:05, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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moved from User talk:Lexor --Lexor|Talk 16:22, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

New_Age_Music

I see you did some work on New Age Music. This article contains most of the Music sub-section from New_Age, word for word, then a nice little table with other links. Do you think this is right to copy and paste a section from a longstanding article just to make a new one? BF 00:17, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

I did not create New Age music, I merely copyedited (check the history) and haven't looked at the parent New Age article itself. However, it is a good practice to include a two or so paragraph summary of an article in the parent article with a Main article: link to the daughter article which is a longer extension of that summary, which will often include the initial summary from the parent article, e.g. Simulation and Computer simulation. In general that's warranted when it is likely that the daughter article will be expanded with additional information beyond what would be wanted in the parent article, which would probably be the case with New Age music. --Lexor|Talk 03:28, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

You know this article was written without any effort at all. Write a few sentences, grab most of the theme and content from New Age, and add a cute little table at the bottom which doesn't give the reader much to research. Lazy? Yeah! BF 22:32, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

"At its beginings, new age music was closely related to the New Age movement of beliefs." I'd like to see some documentation for this. In fact this article is of very poor quality. It suffers from the same problem as the easy listening article: the people who listen to this style of music very rarely describe it as such - and if they do, they usually refer to a much more specific style (e.g meditation CDs), rather than the styles labeled as such by detractors (e.g Enya). People who listen to Enya will only rarely work on the new age article when explaining their kind of music, because they don't listen to new age music. Other people do that. What are we going to do about this? right now this article is not far from being useless.Vintermann 13:24, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

Suggested definition

New Age Music is really popular in my country, and by New Age Music people basically understand all those meditation/relaxation CDs that are around. Particularily the label Innovative Communications (1) had its share of artists that were considered notable: Software, Anugama, G.E.N.E., Karunesh. Also artists such as Suzanne Ciani, Kitaro, Cusco, Space, Gandalf (yes, "Software", "Space" and "Gandalf" are actual band names) - those have at least surfaced here or there, in the press, on illegal MP3 compilations - compared to numerous other musicians ("John St. John" for instance..) who are virtually unknown.

All of the bands/musicians I've mentioned make slow, ambient electronic music, which centers on (that is, with album/track names, or album covers, photography, liner notes..) themes like meditation (Anugama, Software), exotic places (G.E.N.E.), dreams, etc. (Especially meditation (and concepts like tantra, mantra, chakra - things from eastern philosophies) is a recurring theme, and I guess this is why a lot of people think that "New Age Music is connected to the New Age movement of beliefs"). And this, well, seems to be the definition of New Age Music.

As for artists like Tangerine Dream, Enya, Vangelis, Klaus Schulze,.. - well, firstly, their music is very different from what I've described, even though they all have some pieces that sound like generic electronic soundscapes (sic!). Seconldy, several of them (Tangerine Dream) have repeatedly stated they hate the term "New Age Music" and do not consider their music that. Thirdly, they have armies of devoted fans who protest against all kinds of labels connected with "New Age".

Tangerine Dream are 100% New Age Music. All ex-members have also released New Age music including Christopher Franke's Enchanting Nature, Steve J's New Age Emotions.

Edgar Froese hates many things. His hatred of the term New Age is his attempt to rewrite history. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dunk meister (talk • contribs) .

So I mean, would it be an acceptable solution to define New Age music by describing it like I did above, or like it is briefly described in the article (The large percentage of music described as New Age music is instrumental, and electronic), and to list several artists from Innovative Communications and similar labels (if someone can actually find those - I don't own any meditation CDs, but I believe at least some of them would have information on record labels) as 'new age musicians'. Other artists (Enya, Vangelis..) could be placed on the same page with a notice saying that they're not widely considered "New Age", and that their music can sometimes be very different from the kind of music described in the article.

I'm not sure if it is NPOV to connect meditation/relaxation CDs and New Age Music, but (a) 'new age/new instrumental' is what at least some of those CDs are labeled and (b) there's no specific term for the kind of music on meditation CDs, which is calm, repetitive and electronic - yet the variying definitions of New Age Music agree that it is calm and electronic.

I don't want to make any edits to the article at the moment, since I have no idea if the definition I offer is going to be accepted. So, could anyone offer opinions on what I'm suggesting? :) -- Jashiin 19:47, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't NPOV be documenting the use of the term instead of trying to find The New Age Music and trying to categorize that somehow? For that, I think much of what appears on talk here makes sense. I came to look up the word, because it never made any sense to me. I'm walking away with the controversial pointless fake category -definition.

Vangelis, Enya, Enigma, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, Michael Garrison, Kitaro, Klaus Schulze, Yanni and similar artists are all consider to be artists/musicians who create New Age Music. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dunk meister (talk • contribs) .

I definitely agree with explaining the different views held of the term "New Age Music". For example, Groove Unltd. plus much of their customer base strongly disagrees that they'd center on NA. Given that Enya disagrees with the term too, there might be some sort of wider backlash from within various communities against the "secular" usage of the term. I have heard it claimed that the term is used in Europe more specifically than in America, that is, according to the definition in the 2nd paragraph of the original post.

That said, where did that comment about TD being 100% NA suddendly come from? It looks somewhat detached there. OK, yes I am a devoted fan, but not really particularily Anti-New-Age (quite the contrary in fact; I think most of their output could apply.) Still, TD have at least 15-20 albums which have nothing particularily New Ageish on them and dozens more with only nods. IMO this includes just about everything up to 1982 or so - their formative years and initial rise to fame. I've seen this "100%" claim made before numerous times, and I'm wondering whether the people saying this have a definition of "New Age" radically different from mine, or are just ignorant of the enormous scope of variation during TD's career. Even albums from the same year, such as "The Park Is Mine" and "Legend", can be lightyears apart.

Also, I've gotten the impression that EF isn't really attempting to rewrite history, but he rather understands "New Age Music" as music necessarily connected with the religious movement - I quote from the sleeve notes of "The 7 Letters From Tibet": "This recording is not supporting any kind of political party or idea. It is also not the composers' intention to support or criticise any kind of dialectical spiritual movement." Tropylium 18:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Two of the comments, including the one about TD being 100% NA, were added by Dunk meister. He didn't sign his posts so it looked like I said those things. I've edited the page accordingly. Jashiin 22:15, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

New Age music is not a narrow genre. Just as techno, world music, and other genres contain many different styles of music. Some of the earliest music known as New Age Music was by synthesizer artists such as Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis. These artists are known worldwide as New Age Music artists. Some of those artists have released albums that some could call "borderline New Age". But as artists within a genre expand or change their sound it also usually affects the genre their in. It caused the genres to expand. It's the same way with most every other genre. Rock, Country, Techno, etc have expanded.

Most New Age Music has nothing do to with the New Age Movement. New Age Music is a collection of many styles of music that many times shares the same fan base. There will be some artists who don't like the genre name their music falls under. Many artists don't like any type of labelling of their music/art.

I know of dozens of "IDM" artists who don't care for that label for their music. But I see them (the artists and their music) listed as IDM all the time. Most "Intelligent Dance Music" isn't for dancing or very "intelligent". IDM is just a term used to describe a collection of styles (genre) of music. I ask if all IDM that isn't for dancing, isn't "intelligent" be not known as "IDM" for now on? Should an artist's music not be "IDM" anymore if they artist doesn't like the term "IDM"? I think not.

Should all "goth" music that has nothing to do with the ancient Germanic Goth tribe not be called Gothic music anymore? What is "industrial" music? Is it music related to "industry" in some way? We are talking about genres or a genre of *music*.

Those who are familar with other styles and genres of music most likely known that an artists and bands usually have little imput in what their music is called or what genre of music it falls into. Their input is the music they make. Throughout music history it's been radio DJs, record labels, fans, magazines, compilations and help put a genre tag on an artist, band or styles of music.

The definition for New Age Music and it's artists should reflect the worldwide view as it being a large genre made up several styles of music. Many of these styles and some of the earliest are synthesizer or electronic-based. Some also refer to as New Age Music as "Music for a New Age" much of which was visionary. by Dunk meister on Jan 20, 2006

Mike Oldfield

Doesn't classifying Tubular Bells as the first New Age album contradict the definition given in the first place that the beginnings of New Age music were closeley related to the mystical matters of the New Age movement? Oldfield originated from the jazz-related and somewhat humoristic Canterbury Scene. 84.174.254.240 10:59, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Formatted

I have drastically changed the article and "wikified" it with guidelines of Wikipedia style. I have also removed personal opinions and irrelevant information that does not belong in this article. There could be alot more change to this article because it seems loosely organized and misleading. I suppose somebody will come later to edit the article information better and cite references. Remember that Wikipedia is not a message board to spout your beliefs. Save that for the article's talk pages or refrain completely. I hope though the article will improve. --Eeee 03:23, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I've done some stylistic editing re the Froese qote, but more could be done here. Also, when was this said and in what context? Is the comment on it really necessary? Metamagician3000 09:28, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Lead-in

This article was deperately in need of a lead-in, and I started a somewhat rough one. I blantantly ripped the statement The borders of this genre are not well defined, and the dividing lines between its sub-genres are often fluid from the Science fiction article. As usual, edit mercilessly. --192.112.210.155 15:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC) Darn it, got logged out again. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 15:40, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

New version of the article, feedback requested

In an attempt to improve the article, I did a little draft and placed it here: Talk:New Age music/Draft (didn't want to make the actual edit, since apparently the issue about what New Age music is is controversial). There's a general description of the style, a section about different points of view and several lists of artists. I did not include the list of labels because I just don't know much about these labels and I've got no idea whether they're really New Age labels (don't have time or resources to check now). Feedback is greatly appreciated! I hope that enough people are interested now and that we will be able to create a verison of the article that is to everyone's liking. Jashiin 14:27, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• At first glance: excellent work. Defining this subject is like trying to herd cats, but you did a really good job. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 14:58, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  • indeed. Great job. Maybe some more ideas of the current article can't be integrated (although i can't really say how, at the moment). Another resource might be : allmusic.com to get some idea (although the new age styles section don't all really fit that well in the new age genre, but might be related rock/world music/traditional/... styles. And of course Ishkur's Guide always gives an sataric but informative idea of the genre ;-) --LimoWreck 16:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

"Initially, the main outlets of music were New Age bookshops and music stores, thus the term New Age music became applied."

I have a problem with the above quote. It implies that New Age was applied to music because of (mainly) of bookstores and music stores. Those outlets had some imput but so did radio programs, reviews, printed media, fans, record labels and what have you. Just as most every other genre was shaped and form from various areas so was "New Age Music" User:Dunk Meister 19:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

If there are no other comments in the next day or so, I suggest you post your draft. I had posted a note about this on the Tangerine Dream page on the 1st, so I think there has been a bit of visibility. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 11:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Allright, I guess I'll do it on Monday. I've got a feeling that someone will complain though :) Jashiin 16:33, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

If there were no complaints, this wouldn't be Wikipedia :-). Seriously though, your draft has been advertised on two talk pages for one business week- that's certainly enough time for any major objections. We both know it's going to be edited mercilessly once it's posted: and that's a good thing. --Gadget850 ( Ed)

NOT JUST A STYLE, OR SUB GENRE!

• New Age Music is not just a subgenre of Electronic or Ambient music. New Age Music INCLUDES many different styles and influences from Western, Eastern Classical music to Avant-Garde, Jazz, Minimalism, Indigenous, Sacred, Symphonic, Electronic and Solo Acoustic Music. You can't say it is mostly Electronic because a large part of New Age Music includes Solo Piano, Harp, Flutes, Sitar, Drums etc. I would say any instrument and/or almost any musical style you can imagine has been used to create New Age Music. It is not the style or the instrumentation, that makes it New Age! It is a certain feeling and experience that the music evokes in the listener that will give New Age Music it's qualification. That's why it is so confusing to talk about it. What is now called New Age Music is as old as music itself. There was always music to expand consciousness, sacred music, music for healing, relaxation and music for meditation and contemplation. Music created with a certain knowledge of music psychology, or created in an appropriate state of consciousness and with the intend to heal, enchant, spiritualize, or relax and uplift will have a different impact than music created for entertainment or mass-hypnosis. All theses components have to be taken into consideration when talking about New Age Music, labels and artists. I would suggest to make New Age Music a separate article/section. It is definitely not just a sub section of electronic music. There are many artists that also qualify to be included in Electronic Music, and there will be of course a sub genre called "electronic" in New Age Music. Electronic Music and New Age Music can share some of the information in this sub genre. But the same is true for Classical Music, Jazz, World Music, and Pop Instrumental as well as some Pop Vocals. Just to give a few examples, I would consider Donovan's ATLANTIS a New Age Song. Composers such as Ravel and Debussy have certainly written music that could be termed New Age and Paul Horn's "Classic" INSIDE THE TAJ MAHAL or INSIDE THE GREAT PYRAMID could also be listed under Jazz...

We need much more educated comments here. Onam 19:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Confusing New Age and other genres

Perhaps there should be a secion on those genres that are closely related to New Age, and whitch often get miscategorized as new age. If you are going to say that Enya would not technically be classified as New Age, perhaps you should say that her music would technically be classified as Celtic. I have seen a great many celtic artists end up with new age music, despite the glaring differences. If you go to some record stores, you will find artists such as Lorenna McKennett classified in that section. I think that this tendency to classify everything that does no fit easially into any of the other genres as New Age is interesting enough to be commented on. --Zanthra 05:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

You mean comments like "If it's over five minutes long and doesn't have any words we can understand then it must be New Age". --Gadget850 ( Ed) 13:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there's enough material for a whole section on the subject; how about tweaking the description of the first point of view in the article so that it mentioned the comments of the kind Gadget850 mentioned? Or making a small paragraph about it in "Definitions". I can't think of many genres to cover, except Ambient and Celtic. Jashiin 18:20, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Genre-wise, "Berlin School" could also be considered, maybe also "World Music" and "Space Music" in general (I know many people who consider space music to definitely not be synonymous with NA)... But the fact is, there is dispute over whether these genres are completely independant of, overlapping with, or downright subgenres of New Age; that is, there seem to be vastly different conceptions of just what "New Age music" includes. (I still think someone ought to do a research on how exactly these opinions are distributed... not here of course, but it'd be definitely be interesting.)

Currently, the article does mention that "the borders of this genre are not well defined". This seems something of an understatement to me, and could probably be expanded. The "no clear border with ambient" is a good note; next step could be to say that there's also a wide continuum from NA to Celtic (or Krautrock, or trance, or whatever) but most fans consider there to be a definite cutoff point somewhere along the line, and that the opinions on its location can vary. Or does someone object? Tropylium 09:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

NEW AGE MUSIC MARKET SHARE

There are thousands of New Age titles and probably over 100 subgenres. New Age is much bigger than most people might imagine. Since sales for the New Age genre are only captured statistically in record retail the numbers put out by the RIAA are only roughly accounting for half of the sales. New Age Music has in reality about 10% of the music market! Onam 19:17, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Accuracy and order of definitions

Definition 3 claims to be "not accurate" while 2 & 1 only "can be questioned" / "is problematic". How so? This could be read to imply that 3 is an "incorrect" definition, which seems like a POV to me. I don't think I can agree with the interpretation "this definition is more vague than the others" either. Can I get some comments on what was meant here?

Also, does anyone think it would it be useful to list the definitions in order of inclusivity / breadth instead, that is 1 > 3 > 2 or 2 < 3 < 1? It would add some NPOV to the order of them. I can imagine people protesting that the order of the list suggests eg. that the first definition(s) would be the most (more) common one(s). Tropylium 09:55, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Music Genres related articles

Before reverting my next contributions to this article, please read

1) Browsing Music Spaces - Categories And The Musical Mind.

2) A Theory of Musical Genres - Two Applications (1980).

Thank you.Brian Wilson 18:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

New Instrumental music

A former version of this article shows some interesting sentences that could be put in this one.Brian Wilson 20:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Considering a new approach for the Definition of New_Age_Music

I started to edit the main article but decided to post this comment first. If no-one replies then I will go ahead and make the edit, but I am relatively new here and would prefer to discuss this with the other editors before making this change.

I suggest that we approach the definition of New Age music from a different direction. It should not be defined by the instruments that make the music, or by being electronic, or instrumental, or ambient, or meditative. The defining element is the feeling or experience it creates (or encourages) in the listener. That is a feeling most would consider positive, relaxing, inspiring, intriguing, expansive, comforting and inclusive of cultures. It is certainly true that much New Age music is electronic, and some of it is religious, but I would not define it as based on either of those ideas.

The article as it currently appears gives the impression that New Age Music is a subset of Electronic Music that many consider somewhat religious, and that lots of people don't like the term due to its religious connotation. That does not seem correct to me. If you browse the music in a so-called metaphysical bookstore, or even browse the wide variety of music listed as new age on Amazon, a large portion of the music is not electronic at all. Yes, much of it is, but not enough to make it a sub-genre of Electronic Music. Take for example a piano solo by George Winston, or a Native American Flute solo by Carlos Nakai - there is nothing electronic about those at all, yet they are widely considered to be part of New Age Music (even if the performers themselves do not call it that).

We should consider history as well - that this type of music started appearing commercially in small stores in the 1970s and began to gather momentum in the 1980s, but the term "New Age Music" was not used until the late 1980s when the major labels and radio stations like "the Wave" in Los Angeles (formerly KMPC) started using the term. The artists who had been making this kind of music independently for many years prior to that did not use the term "New Age" to describe their music. Mostly, they did not use any genre label at all because they did not begin within the record industry as such, they began with the music first and only later when the wider record industry discovered profits in this kind of music, around the time of the ascendancy of Windham Hill and now-defunct ventures like Private Music, then the genre needed to be named so the distributors and radio stations would know where to put it. In the earlier times this music was found mostly in bookstores and independent record stores with owners or buyers who sought it out.

It seems to me we should separate the history of New Age Music from the current breadth of this deep genre. At the beginning it was mostly instrumental. But New Age music has been evolving and expanding for 30 years! Now it includes plenty of vocal music, from Sanskrit Kirtan (and somewhat religious) chant music used for Yoga and meditation, to music called Celtic such as Enya and Loreena McKennitt and Gary Stadler (that may bring a "Celtic" impression but is certainly not Celtic in the academic historical sense).

I suggest we develop a definition of New Age music that begins with the feeling or intent of the music, and allows the format of the music and the instruments used to create it to be subordinate to the overarching element of the feeling it creates.

In this way we can - for example - differentiate ambient music from meditative New Age music. There is plenty of ambient music that is beautiful yet dark and disturbing. That kind of ambient music has a strongly valid artistic place, but it should not be included in New Age music, whereas ambient music that creates a peaceful meditative feeling would be included. Some ambient music would easily fit into both categories, for example Brian Eno - Music for Airports.

We can differentiate New Age Music from various other genres too, I just used Ambient as an example.

Please consider my comments and reply if you wish.Parzival418 08:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I like your ideas, sound very well thought out. Cricket02 16:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I wonder if it would be better to modify the content a bit at a time or first set up a new structure or outline for the new info to fit in. Much of the current version could have a place in the outline, but would not be the main thesis, rather be moved to a subsection or two. (I added a couple tags so readers can see this article is in flux) ... Parzival418 07:44, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Just a heds-up that I like your vision, too. --Tropylium 15:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I like you.I like you.I like you.Doktor Who 15:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Regarding recent edit for alternative terms: I would agree to remove Scott D. Davis as I've requested references on his article page that have not yet been provided, but in reference to Bradley Joseph - he does state in the referenced interview that he uses "Contemporary instrumental", so that is a valid reference. I do still like your vision though. Carry on...:) Cricket02 08:50, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I noticed your request for references in the Scott D. Davis article and looked into it. I checked google and found only his own advertising, I checked All Music Guide and was not able to find anything there about him. I found that he has three albums for sale on Amazon, but that they are ranked in the hundreds of thousands which means they've sold only a few copies. So I did not find him notable and that's why I removed him from the article. Now that I look at this more closely, I see that removing the sentence about Scott Davis makes this subsection, headed Contemporary Classical, have no content at all related to the New Age music genre. I clicked the link in the heading and went to Contemporary Classical and did not find any mention in that article at all about New Age music. It seems to be a totally unrelated genre, not even similar at all. I don't know of any supporting references that connect them, and they are not sold in the same part of music stores. If there are references supporting the connection, I am open to re-evaluating, but for now, believe it would be best to simply remove "Contemporary Classical" from this article completely.

Regarding Bradley Joseph, after reviewing his main Wikipedia article and following the various links, I agree I was hasty and his reference should remain in this article. I see your point that his referenced interview supports the use of the term "Contemporary Instrumental" which adds context to that part of the article and helps to differentiate from the general term "New Age music".

Thanks for your encouragement and for explaining why you reverted those changes. Parzival418 10:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I must apologize for reverting so quickly, I did not realize who you were at first and the mission you've taken on. I would have to agree with you about removing "Contemporary Classical" as an alternative term, I've not come across it myself in relation to "new age". I've seen other artists use "contemporary instrumental" and "adult alternative", with their music being filed under "new age", so if you'd like, I can try and help find additional references and/or terms used. Cricket02 15:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks for the offer of help on this. For now, I removed "Contemporary Classical" per our discussion. As far as working on finding more alternative terms for New Age music, while that could lead to a few interesting examples, I'm not sure if that's the highest priority for our time (though you're welcome to go ahead with that if you like). I feel the article as a whole needs a new approach as I started to discuss at the beginning of this thread, but the vision is not clear yet, so I've been working on other stuff while I muse about it. I'm sure you've been plenty busy too! Parzival418 05:49, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Ambient and New Age music

Ambient Music is an instrumental, not rhythmic and not melodic genre that uses techniques and styles of electronic music, minimalistic acoustic music, and often concrete (sampled) music; it aims to get an "atmospheric environment", a sort of sonic carpet, that can merge with environmental noises or that can be listened as a form of ambience soundtrack. Therefore, the so called Ambient Techno and Ambient House have nothing to do with Ambient Music. Actually, those styles are within the field of "Techno" dance music. Nevertheless, many works by KLF, The Orb, Aphex Twin and others are "pure electronic music" with no beats and drums, and many are pure ambient music, but most of their hits are Techno, a sophisticated form of techno, but nothing more. Sorry if that may annoy someone... Electronica is a non-sense, meaningless word, used only with regard to modern works that mix many different styles. The term "New Age" has a bit more sense, at least New Age artists and works seem to share the same purpose, that is to chill out the listener and help spiritual meditation. For this reason, New Age is hated both by religious fundamentalists (New Age is a plan of the Anti-Christ") and by those musicians and academics that reject such kinda "yoga tool" use of music.Dr. Who 00:08, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

New Age music project focus

[Response to Dr. Who 00:08, 31 December 2006 (UTC)]

We are already familiar with your eccentric POV on this and related subjects. There's no need to publish it on every talk page of every related article. It is still WP:OR that is not supported by any reference sources, and cannot be included in Wikipedia. --Gene_poole 03:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Please, when referring to your opinions about me, use the singular, there is only one person (yourself) that seems to be unable that I was trying to start a discussion, and that I never attempted to put my personal opinions in this article. The same I did at talk:ambient music: I asked if someone had any evidence that Ambient music is also a music form. It is evident to everybody that you are claiming to be the only legitimate owner of this article. And why you ignored Space music and New Age music for ages? You came here only to harrass me, isn't it cyberstalking?Doktor Who 19:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

You don't seem to be following the discussion very well. Numerous editors have challenged your attempts to insert eccentric, unreferenced personal opinions into this and related articles. Wikipedia is not the place for you to conduct "discussions" about your non-mainstream pet theories. You can "discuss" them all you like, but as original research they cannot be written into Wikipedia. If your opinions ever gain broad acceptance, they will no doubt be documented in reputable independent sources - and those can then be quoted in the article. Until that happens, however, the article content needs to reflect current mainstream opinions - not the meandering personal reflections of one person. --Gene_poole 00:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

My numerous edits (over 1500) always are welcome and accepted by the community, and almost never reverted. I didn't write anything in these articles (New Age/Ambient music). Who are the numerous editors that complain about my behaviour? Re-edited to remove my intemperate comments of 16:52, 21 March 2007 by Doktor Who 01:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to find an answer for the question: why do some musicians "hate" the term New Age?. Also, it seems that some months ago you almost reworked my above comment regarding ambient and wrote it in the main Ambient music. Cheers. :)Doktor Who 17:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Please refrain from posting nonsensical personal abuse and profanities, or you will be reported and your account may be blocked. --Gene_poole 01:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, yes, report me, feel free. I want to see..... you have right scared me. "Personal abuse", ohohoh, pathetic....Doktor Who 18:58, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Doktor Who, Gene is provoking you with WP:POT-kettle; he himself has written article statements that he can't reference. He will try to take advantage of your emotional reactions, so just ignore anything provoking. I assume someone with Gene's style probably doesn't want anything explained to him by anybody, so I suggest that you not try. If you don't respond to him when provoked, that leaves more discussion space for normal editors to respond to you on content issues, even if they don't agree with you. Milo 10:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I can't understand that guy, really. Very strange person. I can't see how we can progress such articles if he's always trolling around us, I can't understand why he hasn't been banned yet. Doktor Who 10:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Relax some. Your contributions to the discussion are useful enough that I want to read them. Music is a universal language, and I welcome your discussion input from experiences outside the English-speaking countries. Milo 10:05, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your support, I appreciate it very much. I'm in touch, in the "real world", with a famous artist of the Canterbury Scene, I can't wait to meet him and talk about music.Doktor Who 10:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Please don't clutter up article talk pages with off-topic personal chit-chat. Comments of that nature belong on your personal talk page. --Gene_poole 01:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Canterbury Scene is on topic. Milo 10:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

This is not a discussion of the Canterbury scene. It is certainly not a discussion about who Doktor Who meets to talk about music with. Take it to your talk page. --Gene_poole 20:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Canterbury Scene involves artists who are among the progenitors of New Age Music. If we can have input from someone who was part of that scene at the time that will be an excellent source to improve the article. Comments in that regard are appropriate here. Parzival418 21:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this is incredible. I've kept quiet long enough. While everyone else has been successful in maintaining a civil and intelligent conversation on this subject, User Gene_poole, has chosen to attack from the very start, and quite frankly its getting ridiculously exhausting. There. I had something to say. Now report me as a sockpuppet too. [1], [2], I encourage all to ignore this fool and carry on with the dialog on this subject, and let any and all reviewers see who is really the initiator in these attacks. Thank you. Cricket02 23:59, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

The only "incredible" thing here is the extent to which one puppetmaster can create so much havoc while attempting to subvert Wikipedia content and verifiability policies. That's really all there is to it, and you'd do well not to encourage it. --Gene_poole 04:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

(reset)
Yes, I agree, enough is enough. I too think we need to find ways to ignore him.
I suggest that he is engaging in a type of minimal trolling that just barely ducks the rules for the purpose of maintaining WP:OWNership. As long as we are talking about him and his constant attention-distracting behaviors, we're not discussing, consensing changes, and making significant edits to the New Age music articles that he WP:OWNs.
One of the early Wikipedians, Larry Sanger, said show the door to trolls. Jimbo Wales suggested that it's difficult to formulate rules against trolling, because it's always possible to troll within the rules. But you know a troll by the effects of his overall behavior.
Seeing through his Wikilawyering, his collective behavior is a violation of Wikipedia project purpose, and it justifies us organizing ways to ignore his disruptions. As artfully tendentious as he is, I think we'll need a stream of creative new ways to keep moving the discussion and edits back to project music work. How? One way is to ask for help. Another way is to think like dance music. He can't dance, so the rest of us have the advantage.
To begin with, just ignore him. Ignore all the minimal trolling behaviors. Ignore all intimidation. Then if, like a two-year-old, he clearly breaks rules to get attention back on him, report him immediately. He's had enough warnings. If you aren't sure community editors would agree, continue to ignore him until he's clearly used up all his slack, then report him.
And... if he becomes cooperative — since that's what we want — then cooperate. :) Milo 10:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, with all due respect, I'm tired of reporting malicious users; I would like to spend some of my spare time to add valuable info on records, discographies, collaborations, but even this simple activity is not easy; in one case, despite I had correct info, the Gardener of Geda reverted my attempt to fix wrong info in a Brian Eno's album, and he/she reports this simple fact as something strange. So, we have almost 2 problem editors.Doktor Who 19:26, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with your point. Please do work on music which is your strength, and let the rest of us do tendentious user reporting. User reporting is confrontational and requires strong English language skills, which being ESL, you don't have.

Gardener has so far been a content opponent at Space music, but that's just normal. I think it is politically unwise of him to support Gene's tendentious editing, because if one feels the need to do that, I think it's time to reexamine one's POV. If Gardener had any flexibility in his Eurocentric POV on content, we might be able to negotiate a compromise.

However, I see it as an issue, the way that Gardener stretches his interpretation of references beyond what their facts will support. For example, At Space music he put in a trash reference to try to prove that "Space music is a type of ambient music. [3]" His reference refers to "ambient electronics" not ambient music, and it continues by describing an ambiguous relationship of ambient to spacemusic, not a "type of" relationship. AGF, this may reflect Gardener's amateur status as a researcher, rather than any desire to misrepresent references. Every editor has to learn research skills sometime. Having said that, Gardener declined my previous suggestion that he learn more about the Hearts of Space sound before dismissing it as irrelevant to the Space music article. Not a good sign for being willing to learn.

Overall, and trying to be fair, I think it's too early to declare Gardener to be a "problem editor". I think you just have to get other editors to tell him when he's out of consensus; like many editors, he seems to yield to consensus by going away for a while. Milo 00:48, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Despite those sad episodes, I "still" regard the Gardener as a valuable contributor in several fields. I meant "problematic" in reference to these topics. Doktor Who 22:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

My broken edit summary

1. (cur) (last) 16:00, 12 March 2007 JohnCub (Talk | contribs) (←Undid revision 114563690 by 209.204.98.238 (talk) -- Undoing because user')

I meant to say Undoing because user's contributions in the past few minutes have all been vandalisms so I assume this one is as well. JohnCub 16:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

External link seems to be advertising - shall it be kept or deleted?

Today, this new external link appeared in the article: http://www.newagepiano.net (labelled New Age Pianists). I followed the link to a website that seemed to me to be purley advertising of non-notable artists with no informative content, so I removed the link by undoing the edit, including an edit sumary stating it was a self-promotional link.

Within moments, User:Gene_Poole reverted my deletion with this edit summary: (revert - perfectly on-topic informational link). I took no action but noticed other editors re-deleting the link and each time, Gene reverted the deletions. I was not involved in any of those edits either way (other than my initial deleting of the link that appears to me to be advertising), but since there was so much back and forth, I am posting my notes here about why I removed the link in the first place.

I explored the linked website and found that none of the pianists listed there are notable according to WP:notability. I did not see any New Age pianists listed there who I know to be notable, such as for example, George Winston or Jim Brickman or Suzanne Ciani or David Lanz. How could that website be an informative source of New Age pianists if it omits the most important ones? I did not recognize any of the artist names so I googled several of them. I found that they were listed only on self-promotion sites such as CD Baby, MP3.com and others like that. The linked website itself stated on its home page that it was launched only a month ago. I further explored the website and found that it had only a few sparsely populated database pages and that it did not contain any informative pages about new age pianistsIt did contain advertising links to websites of the listed artists, and a shopping section and downloads section, again with only music by artists not known as historical contributors to this genre.

Since the link is basically a new website aggregating advertising and not providing any informative content, that link does not belong here, according to Wikipedia:External links#Links normally to be avoided.

Gene, after carefully reviewing that website in detail as noted above, I don't understand why you would want it listed in the article. If you still feel that link is valuable for this article, I'd appreciate it if you would explain your reasons here. Thanks. Parzival418 08:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Obviously I agree with you. Once again, one person's POV is trying to damage the content of this Encyclopedia. I'll revert it endlessly.Doktor Who 09:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that Parzival418 did a terrific analysis for invalidating that link. This reversion is a small but good place to draw the line on Gene's WP:OWNership of the New Age music articles. A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step. Milo 11:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

And how long do we have to wait before trying to rework these articles seriously? Please tell me, so that I'll take a Wikibreak n the meanwhile, I'm talking seriously, do not take it in a wrong way, cheers.Doktor Who 13:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

(reset) Anti-tendentious editing procedure isn't what any of us are used to, and I'll understand if it's too tedious for you or others to want to participate in. It will be much slower than a normal rework, because we shouldn't just freely make individual editor edits. We should only add WP:ATT referenced statements, since he can't remove those without getting reported. Since every new statement has to be referenced, the article may not read smoothly, but I think that has to be lived with.
The outline of the procedure is:
1) WP:ATT statements research starts right away,
2) post and discuss candidate statements while ignoring trolling, then
3) edit when each statement is consensed.
4) Discuss and justify deletes of inappropriate statements, just as we are handling the newagepiano.net link.
5) Revert and patrol to hold new statements or deletions;
6) open article and user RFCs, or report violations as necessary.

However, I suggest that you should let the rest of us do any reversions. As a practical matter we may need to open an RFC/U on him for rules violations, and if you do reversions, he'll try to involve your RFC/U case as an excuse for his tendentious behavior. Without your involvement, he can no longer seriously distract us by again making laughingsocks claims against me and Parzival418. If he does so anyway, we can just ignore it — at Checkuser laughingsocks is GAME OVER. Milo 18:44, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: newagepiano.net. Back in February, I identified this link as self-published/self-promotional on the Steven Cravis article, at which time I did not remove but I did request more reliable sources (Talk:Steven Cravis#Notes). At that time, he was about the only artist on the site, and his article clearly states it was begun by him and Wierzbicki.org which identifies itself as a "cross-media network". It seems now there are more artists that have signed up. I too do not see this link as relevant to the history of new age music. Cricket02 13:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

reasons for removing unrelated "See Also" link New Thought Music

I removed the link because New Thought Music is not related to New Age Music and is not a genre at all. The linked article is a stub devoid of references, referring to musical works embodying a particular set of theological doctrines rather than a clearly defined genre or style of music. Upon googling New Thought Music, I found a website titled newthoughtmusic.com that includes this quote:

Since it is this universal spiritual philosophy that is the common thread, virtually any style of music could be construed as New Thought. What is important is the intention encoded into the music, not the stylistic form itself. So, it is possible for us to find examples of "New Thought Music" in folk, jazz, classical and even in existing popular repertoire (Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, James Taylor and many others).

All of the other references I found on Google were similar; none of them show any connection to New Age music sytlistically, none of the performers are known New Age music artists, none meet the criteria of WP:notability. I listened to a variety of MP3 samples provided on those websites and found styles of music ranging from a capella chanting with english lyrics to folk, country and rock/pop ballads. The only factor I could identify in common was the religious lyrical themes. I was not able to find any reference at all in any third party music industry websites to New Thought Music. Since there is no musical sytlistic relation to New Age music, the link should not be here. Parzival418 05:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC) [re-edited to remove a misapplied Wikiguide and clarify text, no substantive change -- Parzival418 08:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)]

...and in a broader perspective...

I agree with the removal. Nevertheless, many people regard "New Age music" as a functional definition, it means that everything that is loosely linked with mystic, spiritual, religious themes of modern times (and ancient too, with a modern perspective) is New Age. We should solve this problem at the main Music genres article. We can cathegoryze music according to 3 or 4 methods, but the most prevailing is the "loosely" stylistic one. Doktor Who 12:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

...we are going to talk about music genres...

That's a good point, I've thought about this as well, and it's a difficult issue I continue to ponder. I'm sure we'll discuss this further as this article is improved, and more generally at Music genres. New Age is harldy mentioned in that article, it has a sentence or so in the Electronic genre section. But New Age is not a subgenre of Electronic, since there is plenty of purely acoustic music within New Age, so much improvement is needed over there. Parzival418 19:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You are exactly right, there is much New Age music that is not electronic, I think we should definitely delete this genre from the list of [[electronic music] subgenres, if other users agree. Some modern musician enjoy the terms "(new) instrumental music" or "atmospheric music".Doktor Who 22:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

...broader and broader...

Music genre (the plural is a redirect) says: "A music genre (or subgenre ) could be defined by the techniques, the styles, the context and the themes (content, spirit)." So New Thought Music could be a genre of spiritual theme. But this particular case suffers from a lack of commercial consistency based on the very real desire of listeners to hear stylistically, 'more music like that'. I subscribe to a view not explicitly mentioned in the Music genre article, that genres include by necessity, a balanced blend of commercial description and critical analysis.

More complexly, I think of a genre as symbolized by a tetrahedron with artist, producer, critic, consumer, at the four vertices (corners), while they interact with each other in a push-pull balance along the vectors at the edges. An analogy, of mechanical tension and compression balance to music business interactions balance, is demonstrated by the Needle Tower tensegrity art shown here. Why I think this, is partly that Stephen Hill, the founder of spacemusic genre in 1973, was an architect influenced by architect Buckminster Fuller (Geodesic domes), who analyzed this 1968 Kenneth Snelson sculpture to coin the tern "tensegrity" (tensional integrity). Whatever, it's a stunning photo.

An alternative idea with which to tinker is that New Thought Music might be a meta-genre — a genre of genres. To sell such a concept, I think one would need a presentation form like a VJ video in which the widely differing genres were bound together into a set using spoken words, text, or images of the New Thought Movement. Milo 23:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Well said. I've been thinking for a while that describing music genres needs more dimensions. I like your analogy of the way business balances music influences as similar to the mechanical/gravitational forces acting on structures. For music to be created and somehow found by the listeners who want that kind of music - processes of creation, portal, filters (critics and social networks), marketplace, consumers - is changing fast in today's world - the structure needs to be flexible and adaptable, sort of spongy, yet still needs to have some way of retaining the ability to categorize music in ways that are useful for consumers to find it and marketers to tell them about it. Parzival418 00:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Very, very interesting.Doktor Who 00:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Funny you should mention "structure needs to be flexible and adaptable, sort of spongy". Wire and tubes or sticks and string tensegrity spheres will deform and bounce to some degree like a rubber ball. See pic here (slightly flattened under it's own weight). Here's Fuller's description of bouncing tensegrity spheres including a mahogany (!) one harmlessly dropped by a hurricane. (find down to "mahogany"; next two paragraphs). Milo 01:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly what I meant! Cool references! Parzival418 01:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

References

This page needs more references. There's a lot of new age music artists and fans and lots of new age music available in stores and online, but the article doesn't have many footnotes. Does anyone have any ideas where we can find some good sources? --Tikilounge (talk) 19:07, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Have you looked through this reference list? This 23 August 2008 version of Space music#Footnotes dates to before the "Niche market" section and its references were removed.

The most generally useful reference I found among them is Allmusic, "the most comprehensive music reference source on the planet".[4] Reference 26 (currently 36 with corrected name spelling) links to several Allmusic pages related to New Age bin music. For convenience I've copied those links here:

Allmusic New Age music page

Allmusic Space music page

Allmusic Electronica music page

Allmusic Ambient music page

Milo 04:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Linking post-rock music to this genre

Are there any sources for this? It makes sense in a vague way, but that's WP:OR. 115.64.123.40 (talk) 00:24, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Pictures

The current layout of pictures creates sandwiching of text, which is discouraged by the MOS. Articles do not usually start with a picture on the top left as this apparently means that readers have difficulty finding the start of the text. I don't particularly want to revert this as I am unfamiliar with priorities here, so I leave it up to a regular editor to sort. See MOS:IMAGELOCATION for the guidelines.--SabreBD (talk) 15:47, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

• Removed ambigous "also called instrumental pop". Who in the world could call the vocal-using ethno-electronic downtempo music "instrumental" or "pop"? And how does this correspond with Easy listening article? Quite an obvious mistake. Garret Beaumain (talk) 20:17, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The article really needs a rewrite

According to Allmusic, New-age music is "born from an aesthetic that aims to induce a sense of inner calm, new age music emerged from the meditational and holistic fields. Generally, these are harmonious and nonthreatening albums that are allied with new age philosophies encouraging spiritual transcendence and physical healing. Some of these albums are artistically satisfying as well as therapeutic. Lesser musicians, however, often make ridiculous claims in the liner notes as to their ability to catapult listeners into advanced spiritual states through specially designed sonic vibrations and "immaculately conceived" musical ideas".

However, I don't understand why and how in both Allmusic and the article are cited considerations by which are listed/higlighted electronic music composers whose music style has nothing to do with New Age spirituality, relaxation, meditation, alternative healing, yoga practice and so on. The "History" section is badly written, and facts about the so-called genre or musical movement are misleading; example, Mike Oldfield's progressive rock album Tubular Bells is cited to be an album of New-age genre - that's complete ignorance of musical styles. As can be seen in both "History" and "Influences and themes", the whole article is more focused about the artists who influenced (dubiously) the New-age musical genre and movement, rather then those artists who really belong to it. The whole article needs to focus on the real New-age musicians, for example like Deva Premal, and not electronic composers like Vangelis, and should note the difference between those real New-age musicians, and the general term "New-age music" which is, as stated under "Definitions", used for "music which cannot be easily classified into other, more common definitions". The whole article lacks references. As both Enya and Kitarō were nominated for Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, it should be seen what kind of definiton is used for the genre by the The Recording Academy.--Crovata (talk) 23:05, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

While I agree that this article could be improved considerably, several of your criticisms are directed at statements that currently appear to be supported by reliable sources (for example, your statement about Mike Oldfield). Liner notes, as you suggest, often cannot be regarded as reliable sources, particularly when they are written by the artist, since they amount to self-published statements. It is important to keep in mind that "what we know to be true" makes little or no difference on Wikipedia, where claims must be supported by reliable sources.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:24, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

However, it is a well known problem when seemingly reliable sources do not have reliable and correct considerations - Tubular Bells is not a New-age album, or simply, the source statement was more about the "terminology"/"philosophy" rather than "music genre" of New-age. It seems that exist conflicting viewpoints what is "New-age music". I am now a bit interested, so will do a research on these issues, and then edit the article with reliable sources. If the information on your user page is correct, you could review the edit, and improve the article with your experience and reliable sources which are not unavaliable for me. --Crovata (talk) 01:47, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Jerome Kohl, I rewrote the article. It needs a review for any information or grammatical errors.--Crovata (talk) 09:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Excellent news. I have already found some formatting problems in the references, but I think they have been there for a long time. I will review the text for grammar and syntax. Thanks for your hard work.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:24, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Jerome KohlI am not informed about the general music terminology, but after reading the sources I don't understand what is the correct term of the musical-marketing genre/style/category/; New-age, New Age, new-age, new age or some other, and thus decided to use "New-age". Seemingly, the use of this form makes sense as the genuine "New-age" music is related to New Age movement which name is mostly written with upper case first letters, but...--Crovata (talk) 01:28, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I would say that this is not really "musical" terminology as a marketing term, and there is no single practice in the marketplace. For the purposes of this article, this matter was discussed some time ago (see further up on this Talk page), and it was decided to use all-lowercase. The hyphenated form is used when the two words together describe something else, such as "new-age music" or "new-age artist".

Think Henk N. Werkhoven's The International Guide to New Age Music (1997) could help improve the article, as according to preface "New Age music, though often instrumental, turns out to be a repository for diverse musical styles. It ranges from classical music to rock music, from jazz to meditation music, from Western music to Eastern music. And suddenly New Age vocal music could also be heard... Many record stores decided to call any music that could not be easily labeled New Age... To cope with all this complexity, I have tried in this book to make a first attempt at clarifying this new musical trend by building a dam around all these musical waves. New Age music isn't all that new anymore. The genre has been around for nearly thirty years, counting back to its very first pioneers", and review that the major pop artists like Enya, Enigma, Tangerine Dream or Mike Oldfield were not even mentioned, and the focus was on dedicated new age music artists and labels.--Crovata (talk) 02:03, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Don't know when will have time to edit, but The Dynamics of a Cultural Struggle in Academia: The Case of New Age Music Research (2012) by Omri Ruah-Midbar and Marianna Ruah-Midbar is really good and informative source on the subject.--Crovata (talk) 02:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Jean Michel Jarre

WTF !!! NOTHING ABOUT JEAN MICHEL JARRE ???????? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.90.213.255 (talk) 19:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• He's actually very loosely connected to new age. He seldom uses ethnic or medieval music for inspiration. He almost never uses non-electronic instruments. He doesn't always write downtempo/chillout music. In fact, many of his compositions are fast and upbeat (like most of Chronologie, Side two of Equinoxe) while his slower compositions (like on Oxygene) are better described as ambient. And these "new age spirituality", or at least some ethnic/pagan/medieval/oriental inspiration? Jarre uses none of that. Beaumain (talk) 09:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

It is a fact (though underdocumented in this article) that one use of "new age" is for spacey, non-dance but also not quite ambient, often instrumental electronic music. This is the same use by which people also often classify artists like Vangelis or Klaus Schulze or as "new age". This use persists since often such music has no better description going for it either. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)