Becoming a musician : a longitudinal study investigating the career transitions of undergraduate music students.

This thesis examines the nature of the transition between training as an undergraduate musician and choosing whether or not to pursue a career as a professional performer. Previous studies of musical development have focused on children's skill acquisition, but few have considered the roles of motivation, practice, and the social environment in the transition into the music profession. Musicians making early career choices are also progressing through one of the most critical life-span changes - from adolescence to young adulthood - and little is known about how the psychological changes occurring during this time influence a musician's development. A two-year longitudinal study was conducted with a group of 32 musicians who, at the beginning of the study, were undergraduate music students attending either a British music college or university. Eight interviews were conducted with each of the participants. These were primarily qualitative in design, being either structured or semi structured and the data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques. The findings indicate that distinct characteristics defined the musicians who chose to pursue a professional performance career which differed from those for whom music became an amateur interest. The results suggest that the four factors of motivation, musical identity, learning styles and coping strategies interact and influence the career choices of the musicians. It is suggested that an individual's musical identity and his/her coping strategies play an integral role in the process of becoming a professional or amateur musician. A Dynamic Model of Musical Identity Formation and Career Choice is proposed in order to depict and explain the complex process of becoming a professional or amateur musician in adulthood

The social context of musical success: a developmental account

This paper brings together extensive data from 257 children to explore the relative importance of social environmental factors during critical periods of children's musical development. The paper also presents preliminary findings from a follow-up of 20 of the most successful children eight years later to determine which childhood factors predict differences in success as adult performers. Those children who continued to play an instrument started at an early age, had higher parental support in lessons, and had first teachers who were friendly but not too technically able. However, these factors alone were not sufficient to predict relative success in childhood. Successful childhood musicians appear, in addition, to need teachers who are 'not too relaxed' and also 'not too pushy' and they still also need to do substantial amounts of practice. The follow-up study suggested, though, that successful adult performers were not those who did the most practice, rather the successful adults were those who took part in more concert activities in childhood, did more improvisation, and who had mothers at home in their early years. The results are discussed in relation to theories of musical development and the changing influences of parents, teachers and peers

Asking the readers: audience research into alternative journalism

Alternative forms of journalism are said to challenge the passive role of audience members as receivers and to foster active citizenship among alternative journalists and audiences. Yet the scholarly literature on alternative journalism contains more assertions about than evidence from the audience. Downing has described the audience for alternative media as “the virtually unknown”, prompting him to urge journalism scholars to undertake more audience research to help increase our understanding of this allegedly active and civic-minded public. This exploratory study of the people who regularly read a contemporary example of alternative journalism—an investigative local blog covering one UK city—is intended to contribute towards filling the gap identified by Downing. Audience views are explored by means of questionnaires and focus groups, providing some evidence that individuals are attracted to alternative journalism by their dissatisfaction with mainstream media; that they see alternative media as helping them make sense of the world; and that, to an extent, engaging with such media is both a prompt to, and a reflection of, readers’ democratic engagement as citizens. Recognising the limitations of this small study, the article concludes by reiterating Downing's call for further research

Understanding the musical identity and career thinking of postgraduate classical music performance students

The classical music sector faces an urgent challenge as increasing numbers of performance graduates struggle to establish themselves as full-time professional musicians. In part, this situation relates to narrow higher music education curricula that do not sufficiently prepare musicians for the precarious and nonlinear careers that characterize music work. The study reported here employed Version 1 of the Musical Identity Measure (MIMv1) together with three open-ended questions to explore student musicians’ motivations to engage in music and their career-related meaning-making. A lexicometry analysis based on Bayesian statistics was applied to six psychological and environmental areas identified in MIMv1: (1) resilience and adaptability, (2) approach to learning, (3) emotional attachment, (4) social factors, (5) music and self, and (6) career calling. Results indicate that postgraduate classical music performance students have a strong musical calling and emotional attachment to music. They also recognize the importance of identifying themselves as learners to thrive in the profession, and they accept that the development of social capital, resilience, and adaptability needs attention both during their studies and during their professional life. The article presents recommendations for higher music education and identifies potential risks related to strong identification with music

Understanding live coding events

As an arts practice, live coding has strong roots in musical performance, and the fact that its ‘liveness’ requires the performer to write and modify algorithms in real time [Collins, N., A. McLean, J. Rohrhuber, and A. Ward. 2003. “Live Coding in Laptop Performance.” Organised Sound 8 (3): 321–330] means that it is often treated as a kind of music improvisation. Organised live coding has now passed its tenth year [Magnusson, T. 2014. “Herding Cats: Observing Live Coding in the Wild.” Computer Music Journal 38 (1): 8–16], and during this decade it has been manifested in a variety of contexts. Whilst there is a growing body of research addressing aspects of live coding from the coder’s perspective, little is known about the audiences for these events. Using an online questionnaire, this paper seeks to explore the motivations, experiences, and responses of live coding audiences and to examine their perceptions of the projected source code during live coding events. We aim to shed new light on the role of openness and technology in live coding performances, providing rich context for fuller understanding of this emerging practice and its impact on audience experience

Tracing the transition from study to a contemporary creative working life: the trajectories of professional musicians

The classical music academy is a site dominated by traditional meanings of creative practice and an image of the professional creative career as solo performer that is fully available to only a very few students after graduating. The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to explore career-young professional pianists’ talk about the transition from study within a music academy to working life. The focus is on the ways in which they characterize the nature and significance of this transition from very traditional practice and study, and how they (re)negotiate their identities as professional musicians and pianists in contemporary working life. Four classical pianists were interviewed in-depth about their musicianship, including their transition from study to working life. The qualitative analyses presented here suggest that, as they talked about their transitions and developing musicianship, the speakers constructed, re-constructed and oriented to notions of professional trajectories. Such trajectories are emergent, relational and contextually constituted (Sawyer 2003; MacDonald and Miell 2002; Moran and John-Steiner 2004). Rather than being fixed or dependent on communal expectations, they reflect creative freedom and independence, encompassing multiple influences. Crucially, the transition from study to working life is implicated in the process of assuming agency in respect of one’s own musicianship and career—a process that involves identity work, the (re)negotiation of pathways, narrations and trajectories