Referencing - Why, What, How?

In this Moodle Lesson, you learn why referencing is important and how to reference correctly
using the referencing system APA.

You will also learn important differences in source materials and types of reference, based on
examples.

Below the online module, you find a list of tools and databases which provide a good starting
point for academic research.

At the end of this session, you will be able to apply the different required forms of referencing
consistently and according to the College's policies for academic practice.

You should work through this lesson in your own time and should take no less than 20 minutes to
complete it. You will be required to answer a series of multiple-choice questions during the
lesson. You can work through the lesson as many times as you wish.

Referencing - what is this all about?

Welcome to this session, which will boost your skills and confidence in
referencing sources.
You will come across other people's thoughts and ideas throughout your degree at the RNCM,
but also in your work after you graduate. Referencing, in principle, is the acknowledgment of
such sources in your own work; referencing helps you to correctly incorporate and build on other
people's thoughts and ideas in your own writing and presenting.

This session takes you through four key questions with regards to referencing:

Why do we need to reference?

What types and categories of ideas or sources do we reference?

How does referencing work?

What are some tools to get started on working with sources in music?

Why do we reference?
Most people realise that they need to reference sources because there are consequences if they
don't. (And this is correct: At the RNCM, there are various ways in which we deal with
plagiarism or another form of academic malpractice - you'll find out more in the compulsory
module Avoiding Plagiarism).

But there are five really good (and more positive!) reasons why referencing is an extremely useful
skill:
INFORM - the basic one. We tell our readers where ideas are from. This is good practice not only
in academia, but in many industries.

DEMONSTRATE - the showy one. We demonstrate our knowledge of the field that we're writing
about by referencing relevant literature and sources. This shows that we've gone to the right
sources and critically evaluated them.

ACKNOWLEDGE - the generous one. We make sure that credit is given where it's due. This way
we avoid plagiarising and other forms of academic malpractice.

SEPARATE - the individualistic one. We make it clear where your own ideas start and someone
else's end. This shows that you can critically evaluate, compare, and contrast varying or even
contradictory ideas and arguments and it shows your originality.

RE-INFORCE - the additional one. We reiterate our argument, making it clear that we're in
control of main points. This shows our ability to structure, evaluate, and pinpoint ideas.

What do we reference?
This is a key question. Only if we know what we need to reference can we put into practice our
knowledge of how to reference.

On the following four pages, you will encounter four different but typical scenarios you'll come
across when writing with or on sources.

Quotations are excerpts, sentences, or single words that are taken verbatim (as they are) from a
source and inserted into your own text with quotation marks around them.

Here is an excerpt from an academic text that uses a direct quotation in order to acknowldge,
enforce, and summarise:

Paddison (1982) uses Frank Zappa to exemplify Adorno's 'authentic music', as does Ben Watson
in his Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (1996).

In this example from Kenneth Smith's article on 'Formal Negativities, Breakthroughs, Ruptures
and Continuities in the Music of Modest Mouse' (in the journal Popular Music, volume 33, issue
3, 2014), Smith references two earlier scholars, Max Paddison and Ben Watson. Paddison and
Watson both wrote about a third scholar, Theodor W. Adorno, and Adorno's philosophy and
aesthetics of music. Adorno himself coined the term 'authentic music'. This term is the direct
quotation in this example - it has quotation marks around it and is clearly marked as a term that
is used in Smith's article with a specific history of its own - namely its use in Adorno and
following him Paddison and Watson.

Complicated? Yes, but partly because quoting like this achieves so many goals at the same time.

Do you think quotations need referencing? (We'll find out how exactly to do this later in this
lesson)

A paraphrase is a restatement of a text in your own words. Sometimes you may choose to restate
a text's idea through paraphrasing rather than a direct quotation. The reasons may be manifold.
It could be that you want to summarise a lengthy paragraph, or that you want to fit the idea you
are referencing into your own sentence structure.

Here is an example of a paraphrase in a book chapter on Science-fiction film music:

James Buhler has suggested, however, that the entirety of the soundtrack - sound effects,
dialogue and music - could and should be conceived as an integrated composition (58).

In this example from Lisa M. Schmitdt's book chapter 'A Popular Avant-Garde: The
Paradoxical Tradition of Electronic and Atonal Sounds in Sci-Fi Music Scoring', Schmidt
summarises a claim that James Buhler developed over pages, if not whole chapters or even a
book, into just one sentence. This way, she demonstrates that her readers can take Buhler's
argument as read; she acknowledges Buhler's argument and reinforces a large debate in film
music.

So again, do you think paraphrases need referencing?

Commonly known facts sound obvious, but they can be tricky; for example because we cannot
always be completely sure that they are commonly known.

That said, there are some good examples of these commonly known facts in music. Composers'
years and places of birth are typical, just like the full titles and dates of composition of their
music: Clara Schumann was born Clara Wieck in Leipzig in 1819. She composed one of her best
known pieces, the Piano Trio in G minor, in 1846.

Another example that you might use are well known historical key dates and key events: The
Thirty Years' War began with a revolt in Bohemia in 1618 over the deposition of the King of
Bohemia, Ferdinand II.

Other examples might be musical conventions: A standard sonata form consists of exposition,
development, and recapitulation.

Do we need to reference such commonly known facts?

Someone else's idea could be just that - an idea. But it could also be a model, a graphic, a cartoon,
a theory, or an anecdote. Or a whole set of ideas explored previously by a series or group of
scholars.

Here is an example from an article on film music analysis that credits such a group:

The study of chromatic mediants, chords whose roots are a third apart and which share the same
triadic quality, has experienced a resurgence, following the work of David Kopp, Richard Cohn
and other chromatic harmony theorists.

This is a sentence from Erik Heine's article on 'Chromatic Mediants and Narrative Context in
Film'. It is the first sentence of Heine's article and it serves to open a discussion about these
chromatic mediants in film music. Heine acknowledges and situates his contribution to this
debate about these chromatic mediants, at the same time as telling his readers what chromatic
mediants are. By naming these theorists, Heine references a whole set of ideas about chromatic
mediants. Heine names as his main theorists David Kopp and Richard Cohn. You'll notice that
Heine just mentions their names and not specific books of theirs. He can do this because this is
the first sentence of his article, because these theorists are quite well known in this field, and
because elsewhere in Heine's article, he references specific quotes or paraphrases from their
works.

So, do someone else's ideas need referencing in our texts?

How do we reference?
Now that we have an idea which types of information we need to reference, let's find out what
correct referencing looks like.

Correct and complete referencing consists of two parts: an in-text reference (or citation) and a
reference list.

In-text reference (or citation)

You have already seen a few in-text references in the examples in the previous section of this
lesson. The in-text reference credits a source in a short form straight after quoting or
paraphrasing the source in your text.

Reference list

The reference list gathers and alphabetically lists all the sources you have used (i.e. referenced) in
your text with full details at the end of your text.

Together these two parts give the reader a complete picture of the sources and their use in any
text.

There are several different styles of referencing, i.e. conventions as to formatting and types of
information that a reference needs to display. At the RNCM, we use the American Psychological
Association's referencing style (APA7), which is common in the Sciences, Humanities, and in
Music.

In-text referencing - how does it work?

In-text referencing in APA7 does not use footnotes. References/citations are included in the main
body of text within parentheses (or brackets). They are quite simple and straightforward and
usually include just the author, year, and page number where applicable.

An in-text reference can be either by a direct quotation or by paraphrase.

Quotations

Quotations need quotation marks around them. If you weave in a quotation into your own
sentence structure, you must ensure that the resulting sentence is still correct in its grammar and
punctuation. Quotations should be kept short; they may be definitions or something memorable,
individual, or otherwise striking (see ex. below). Quotations must include page numbers.

Example of quotation:

'The sleepy German city of Bayreuth is the one place on earth where the nineteenth century
springs eternal' (Ross, 2007, p. 11).

Paraphrasing
A paraphrase can be in narrative or parenthetical format (see examples below). Paraphrases do
not need to include page numbers in the reference.

Example of paraphrasing (in narrative format):

Chicago’s Black music scene is described by Linda Rae Brown (2020) as the ideal springboard
for Florence Price’s symphonic ambitions (pp. 81–89).

In the above example, the paraphrase and its reference is woven through a sentence that
mentions the author as the originator of the original thought.

Example of paraphrasing (in parenthetical format):

Issues of race, class, and gender are highlighted in Bizet’s Carmen to a degree that was entirely
new for nineteenth-century French opera (McClary, 1992, pp. 29–43).

In this example, the entire reference is confined into the parenthesis at the end of the sentence.

Both narrative and parenthetical in-text referencing is acceptable. Often, which one you choose
will simply depend on which fits better with your style of writing, or whether you need to save a
few words…

As you see from these examples, in-text references always work on the basis of (author last name,
year, page where applicable).

The reference list: tips and tricks!

It is probably obvious from the very simple and economical nature of in-text referencing in the
APA style that full information about a source must follow in the reference list at the end of your
text.

We distinguish between types of sources, such as books, articles in a journal, websites, scores,
chapters in an edited book (i.e. a book that contains chapters by different authors), theses or
dissertations, and other sources.

It is your job in the reference list to transfer the right source type into the right format.
The RNCM Referencing Guide helps you do this for most common sources types. In the unlikely
case that a type of source you want to reference is not covered there, stick as closely as possible
with the format that is common in APA: author last name, initial. (year). title. type of source
where applicable, link, etc. Think what pieces of information a reader would need to find the
source.

On the next pages, we will explore four examples of common types of references and test if you
can recognise the source type based on the format of the reference. In order to do this, you
become a detective looking for clues in the formatting of the references...

Further help and information on referencing

Phew! Congratulations, you made it.

You now know what to reference, when to reference, and how to reference.

Your next step should be to consult the RNCM Referencing Guide.

If you require further support, book a Study Strategies drop-in session. You can also ask for help
in the RNCM Library.

And finally: The key to becoming an elegant and graceful writer is to ... read, read, and read.