Getting It on Record: Issues and Strategies for Ethnographic Practice in Recording Studios

The recording studio has been somewhat neglected as a site for ethnographic fieldwork in the field of ethno-musicology and, moreover, the majority of published studies tend to overlook the specific concerns faced by the researcher within these contexts. Music recording studios can be places of creativity, artistry, and collaboration, but they often also involve challenging, intimidating, and fractious relations. Given that recording studios are, first and foremost, concerned with documenting musicians’ performances, we discuss the concerns of getting studio interactions “on record” in terms of access, social relations, and methods of data collection. This article reflects on some of the issues we faced when conducting our fieldwork within British music recording facilities and makes suggestions based on strategies that we employed to address these issues

How women become rock musicians

This thesis is about women rock musicians in the U.K. It is based on in-depth interviews with 36 female rock musicians in the 1980s. Firstly, it examines the relative absence of women in rock music-making and explains this in terms of gender socialisation and a number of social constraints operating on women. Secondly, it looks at those women who, despite all the obstacles, do become rock musicians. A number of variables are put forward which, it is suggested, have helped these women overcome gender constraints. These factors are conceptualised as "escape routes" into rock music-making. Thirdly, all-women bands are examined, and the individual careers of the women who constitute them. An ideal-type model is constructed of the stages of a female band's career. It is concluded that, compared to male bands, there are a whole set of factors which make it more difficult for women's bands to be set up and continue along the career path. These factors have the strongest effect in the early career stages. Lastly, some non-typical career patterns are investigated, and particularly the strategies developed by feminist musicians as alternatives to the mainstream commercial path