Instruments part two: tamburica, hybrids, community links, and growing pains! | MusicBrainz Blog

Continuing our story from last time…

tamburica instrument family tree

By now I was starting to get a bit more comfortable in my role as Instrument Inserter. I went about doing a bit more in-depth research, especially for the tamburica, and I made a post on the forum where I asked for input researching these instruments.
Eventually I mean to come back to this group of instruments (and in fact this is what I am doing currently), expanding the family tree I’ve been working on, which is why this “fix” version is still open.

Tamburica: 2017 January 6th to the 25th:

New Feature

• • [INST-64] – add the instruments of the Balkan tamburica orchestra; was: Contratambura
    • [INST-524] – bisernica/prím
    • [INST-525] – brač/basprím
    • [INST-526] – bugarija/kontra
    • [INST-527] – čelović/čelo
    • [INST-528] – bas/berda
  • [INST-455] – (Indian) tanpura
  • [INST-529] – samica/dangubica/kutrevka
  • [INST-457] – clean out and clarify “tambura”   (still open)

Initially, what I found to be the hardest part of adding instruments was actually the addition of aliases. It was a cumbersome, time consuming and annoying part, and I often clamoured for someone to write some sort of Batch Alias script. Then, in March, loujine came in like a superhero with a batch alias script! Now thanks to this script I can add aliases en masse, which has helped me tremendously!

After reosarevok fixed INST-723, I could link hybrids with the instruments they were hybrids of, therefore a batch of “hybrid” instruments came next.

Hybrids: 2017 February to March:

New Feature

• [INST-27] – Banjolin
• [INST-29] – Banjo-ukelele
• [INST-59] – Anglo concertina
• [INST-61] – English concertina
• [INST-120] – Guitorgan
• [INST-251] – Viololyra
• [INST-274] – Mandoguitar
• [INST-338] – Bouzar / Gouzouki
• [INST-486] – German Concertina

Task

• [INST-461] – Add the Wikidata link for the mirliton
• [INST-462] – Add ヴァイオリン alias to violin
• [INST-463] – Add コントラバス alias to double bass

Improvement

• [INST-458] – English Horn – Cor anglais
• [INST-459] – Correct Wikidata link for the three-hole pipe

By this time a community discussion came out about the use of disambiguations and descriptions (instrument exclusive fields, which, unlike disambiguations, are translatable), with some users suggesting they were too long, some pointing out issues with translating and yet others suggesting the description field should be dropped altogether. While this discussion didn’t reach a clear resolution, it’s definitely something we should revisit later.

Stay tuned for part three!

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