Each tune entered into the Skiptune database can be classified along three broad categories:
[check_list]- Time.
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This category records the earliest known year that each tune was written or published. For some tunes, especially folk tunes, the exact year of composition is unknown, and in those cases we rely on the first year of publication. However, in some cases where the historical record indicates that a tune has remain unchanged over its history, an date earlier than the year of publication may be used, but only to the extent justified by the record. While this classification may seem straightforward, there are many instances where it is just not clear if a tune has evolved between the time it was written and the time it was first published. When in doubt, we use the first year of publication. The ‘time’ category is plotted along the x-axis (the horizontal axis). For a discussion of how many tunes in the database were written in these various eras, see Musical Eras.
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- Geography.
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The ‘geography’ category refers to the region of the world in which either a tune was written or associated. There are two observations to be made about this method of classification:
a. Tunes may be classified in more than one geographic region because sometimes a tune’s country of origin is unknown. In such cases a tune may be classified by the continent where it was written. Note that both “Europe” and “Ireland” are included in the y-axis (the vertical axis), even though Ireland is part of the European continent.
b. Some tunes have lives outside of the geographic area in which they were written. As an example, there are many tunes written in Ireland that found popularity not only in Scotland and England, but in America and Canada. Such a tune would be tagged with all five of those countries.
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- Purpose or Style.
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Tunes often feel different from one another and are associated with a specific style. Other tunes have a specific purpose, such as dance. The z-axis (the line that appears to be coming out of the graph) lists some examples of purposes or styles. Again, it is possible for a tune to be tagged with multiple purposes or styles. For example, many jazz tunes are also tagged as show tunes because musical theatre was a source for jazz.
Figure of Tune Classifications
We are still working on analyzing the Skiptune database with respect to these classifications and will update this graph with data when that work is completed. For now we can say that the graph will have dark clouds (clusters of tunes) around the U.S. and Celtic geographic areas on the y-axis (vertical), around the 20th Century area in the x-axis (horizontal), and in the folk area on the z-axes (the axis coming out of the page).